The Heir of Slytherin
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Once, in the early Fall of 1992, Eleanor Lily Potter had a chance to slay a basilisk before the chamber could be opened. Without the heir of Slytherin Lockhart decides to direct a play, Lily struggles with homework, and Wizard Trotsky must come up with a plan b. Side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus", "Phantom of the Opera" Themed
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: As usual, some warnings. First, this is a side fic of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and if you aren't past chapter 50 you will be confused and probably spoil yourself. Second, this is obviously NOT CANON**

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"I will not stay here," this was the first thing Wizard Lenin, in his gloriously new corporeal form, rasped out to Lily as he lay back on the floor of the room underneath the Default common room.

Lily blinked, blinked again, looked at their surroundings. Admittedly, it wasn't the greatest place she'd ever been in. In fact, if she squinted and tilted her head at the right angle, then it did kind of look like a larger version of the cupboard underneath the stairs. Still, there was room, no one would come looking for him down here, if he wanted she could make some furniture for him and give him a nice mattress to lay down on and maybe bring him some books from the library. So, really, all things considered, it wasn't too bad.

"Lily, are you listening?" Wizard Lenin asked, now glaring at her in a way which was rather familiar if slightly surreal in that it wasn't inside of her head and not accompanied by a headache, "I will not stay inside of this room like your secret pet goldfish!"

Lily pursed her lips, again looked around for some other sort of solution, then asked, "Well, where else are you supposed to go?"

As far as Lily knew this was just about the only place she could comfortably stash him while he was a sad little invalid that someone wouldn't eventually stumble across. Sure, she could stick him in an unused classroom, but people walked into those all the time, and if she left him in the Forbidden Forest there was a high chance he'd be eaten by giant spiders.

So really, when your other options were discovered by horny teenagers looking to make out in broom closets and unused classrooms or else eaten by spiders, Lily thought Wizard Lenin wasn't in a bad position.

She opened her mouth to tell him as much then, given the force of his glare, decided not to.

He sighed, a long pulled out thing that looked like it had been torn out of him against his will, and with his eyes squeezing shut as if preparing for a truly heinous blow he bit out, "There is… one other place left in this castle."

Lily blinked at that, wherever this place was he'd certainly never brought it up before. Of course, Wizard Lenin was very guarded about his past and his secrets in general, so she hadn't really expected him to tell her something like this. Still, you'd think a secret place in Hogwarts where you could stash a body would have been very useful.

With herculean effort he lifted himself into a sitting position, reaching out with an arm towards Lily, "Help me up, we have a lot of stairs to walk down unnoticed."

"Stairs?" Lily asked, even as she helped hoist him up, all too aware that their height difference was not making this task ideal. Honestly, it might be better to just float him places, but she had the feeling he would not appreciate that.

He wasn't kidding when he meant stairs.

With grueling effort, a rather heavy notice-me-not in place, they trudged down not one, not two, but seven flights of stairs all the way to the dungeons and then into the girl's deserted dungeon bathroom.

Lily, naturally, hoped that his new bachelor pad was goddamn worth it because both of them were dripping in sweat and panting heavily as Wizard Lenin motioned them towards the sinks.

"I can't believe you want to live in a bathroom," Lily said, looking around the place, not only a bathroom either but the bathroom everyone loathed and avoided. Something about the place just felt… kind of obnoxious in a way that had never made any sense to Lily but was none the less true. Even just standing here she could feel the place getting on her nerves.

"Not the bathroom," Wizard Lenin scathingly retorted, as if she was an idiot for thinking her dragging her to the bathroom meant he wanted to live in the bathroom, "No, beneath it."

"Beneath it?" she wanted to point out that they were about as far down into the castle as you could get but he wasn't paying attention, instead was focusing on one of the faucets, and carefully hissing sweet nothings to it.

And it was, sweet nothings, his face looked almost reverent as well as nostalgic as he leaned in a little too close. Like he was talking not just to an old friend but to an ex-lover who he still thought of quite often and with fondness.

Lily, grimacing slightly and feeling a wave of secondhand embarrassment, really didn't know what to say the uncomfortable tableau Wizard Lenin was making.

However, before she could open her mouth and ask if she was being the third wheel in Wizard Lenin and the bathroom's relationship he was stumbling backwards, practically falling onto her, while the basin of sinks groaned, shifted, and parted to reveal a great dark pit.

"Holy shit," Lily said as she leaned over, peering down into the dark and trying to make out a hint of something inside.

"The entrance to the chamber of secrets," Wizard Lenin agreed, almost in a reverent whisper, "A place that only the heir of Slytherin can open, and myself, the last descendent."

Well, that sounded ominous and exciting, but as far as Lily could tell it was, well, a pit. It was the kind of dark, endless, pit that you threw stones into and desperately waited for an echo as they hit the bottom. Or, barring that, it was the entrance to the labyrinth where somewhere inside the minotaur waited. It wasn't a place that exactly invited one in, or invited awe, for how much it drew the eye.

However, Lily had the feeling that Wizard Lenin wouldn't appreciate that sort of thought, so she kept her mouth duly shut.

Or at least until Wizard Lenin motioned to the pit.

"Oh, come on," Lily said, still supporting the majority of his weight, "You can't be serious, Lenin!"

Wizard Lenin was perfectly seriously, looking down at her like a commander who brooked no insolence among his troops.

"It's a pit! It's a giant, black, pit that could have anything at the bottom!" Lily said, motioning towards it, but Wizard Lenin just looked skyward as if only god could commiserate with his pain.

"There is nothing at the bottom, Lily," he said, with exasperation as if she was being entirely unreasonable, "The place has been abandoned for fifty years now."

"So, you mean anything could be at the bottom!" Lily said, eyes burning as she stared up at Wizard Lenin who was not nearly concerned enough about jumping into mysterious hidden pits at the bottom of Hogwarts, "You haven't been down there in fifty years!"

"Considering I'm the only one who can get down there," he said through gritted teeth, "Then no one else has been down there either! It is fine!"

Lily did not agree with his definition of fine, she thought with some petulance, still, she supposed there was nothing for it. Taking a rather large breath she pushed the two of them forward, dropping down into the black hole, which ended rather abruptly on top of a pile which looked like the bones of hundreds and thousands of rats.

Lily scrabbled upwards, looking down and counting the skeletons, one, two, ten, twenty…

"Lily, if you don't mind," a voice came to her left where, Wizard Lenin, entirely unamused, had been left sprawled on his back on the pile of bones. Lily scrambled and lifted him back up so tha the was practically squishing her.

"Lenin," Lily said slowly as he ushered her forward, onto the surface of loose jagged stones and down into a rather impressive cave system, "What ate all the rats?"

"What?" he asked.

"The rats, they're all dead, and I can't hear any down here so… What killed them all?"

"Oh, that would be the…" Wizard Lenin trailed off, seemed to catch himself, but it was too late as the shed skin of a giant snake came into view. Piles and piles and piles of it stretched in the cavern, leaving Lily wide-eyed and rather intimidated.

"Lenin, I have to tell you, I'm not a fan of snakes," Lily said, or at least, she was neither pro-snake nor anti-snake but she had the feeling that when it came to giant snakes that could shed that much skin she was leaning towards the anti-snake faction.

"You'll be fine," Wizard Lenin said, pushing a now rather unwilling Lily further and further into the proverbial lion's den (but non-proverbial giant snake's den).

"I don't feel like I'll be fine," Lily said, trying her best to maintain her footing in a place that really hadn't been designed for someone to easily walk through. More and more she was wondering why Wizard Lenin found the idea of this hell-hole more pleasant than the nice and comfy Default common room.

Oh god, and she was going to have to visit him down here, not only because he was a cripple and couldn't do anything for himself at the moment but also just because she had never really been without him. A world with him outside of her head, and her still out there in the world, for all that it was now reality it was inconceivable. She was going to have to visit him and he'd have some giant snake friend and they'd have to have tea while it contemplated devouring her.

"You'll be fine," he insisted, now beyond impatient, "You of all people should have no fear given your complete and utter lack of self-preservation. As it is, so long as you're with me, you will be perfectly fine."

"What do you mean so long as I'm with you?!" Lily did not like that statement, she didn't like it at all.

Wizard Lenin hesitated, paused a bit awkwardly, hissed at a vault door and then with a shrug admitted, "Well, it rarely gets an opportunity to eat anything other than rats."

Well, that sounded just delightful, Lily thought to herself. Especially as, when opening the vault door, she was looking out at what looked like it belonged on the set of Indiana Jones as some sort of an ancient temple devoted to the worship of giant snakes. And here she was, virginal maiden, being escorted by the high priest to her snakey doom.

"Slytherin was very… dramatic," Wizard Lenin finally settled on as an explanation, although whether he knew anything about the rather mysterious Slytherin or not was left something up to debate. Lily, continuing to grimace, just shuffled them inside.

"Lenin, seriously though," Lily asked as they made their way down the stone walkway and up towards the front of the temple towards the carved face of what she assumed was Salazar Slytherin, "Why would you want to live here? This place is terrible, damp and terrible and filled with snakes."

"Salazar Slytherin's private library is here," Wizard Lenin said, "In the back of the chamber, and for the most part, left intact. When I was a student I barely had enough time to get through any of it but now, until I get strength back, I will have entirely too much time on my hands."

That was a reason, she supposed, but Lily could have just picked those up for him. That didn't mean he actually had to stay down here. Lily thought that, for the same reason Wizard Lenin insisted on liking a lot of terrible things, he liked this place.

It probably appealed to his sense of melodrama as much as it had appealed to his overdramatic ancestor's.

Lily was about to point this out when she heard the hissing. It was a subtler, softer, thing than the hissing of a kettle or a steam engine, but it was audible none the less and vibrated through her very bones. Lily felt her eyes go wide, her arm tightened around Wizard Lenin instinctively as he, lifting his head with an amused smile, hissed back.

It was an unnatural, inhuman, sound that did not belong from human lips. Yet it came out all the same, a long series of interconnected hisses, slow and leisurely drifting together and down into the dark unknowns past the dark stagnant water.

A rumbling then, from the deep, from some direction Lily couldn't see, like the slow uncoiling of a great beast that shifted rocks and debris out of the way while the hissing just became louder and more insistent.

When it finally emerged, this dark and gruesome god from its den, Lily decided in the aftermath she could not be held responsible for promptly lighting it on fire. It hissed in agony, looking down at her in vengeance but the flames grew higher and hotter, until soon all that was left of the thing was its charred carcass.

Lily, standing there, shaking, was breathing heavily, shaking, and whispered to herself, "I hate snakes, I hate snakes, I hate snakes…"

Wizard Lenin was having no such issues, after gaping at the giant dead snake he then cried out, "Lily, why would you do that?!"

Lily looked over at him, startled, remembered where she was and who she was with and couldn't help but ask, "Why wouldn't I do that?"

"I told you it was fine!" Wizard Lenin said, not having any of that apparently, but Lily wasn't about to have any of what he was having either.

"It was going to eat me."

"It was not going to eat you!"

"It was going to eat me and it was going to be painful and then I'd get brainwashed and have to go by Morgan for a few weeks and live in a sleazy brothel," she wasn't sure where that last part came from, but some part of her was absolutely certain that a confrontation with that giant snake would inevitably lead to Morgan, whatever Morgan was.

Wizard Lenin looked as if he had nothing to say to that, he just leaned against her, stared down, and looked entirely flabbergasted. Finally, taking a breath, he said, "First, even if it had eaten you, which it would not have, you would have been fine given your utter imperviousness to death. Second, how does that second part even relate to a fight with a basilisk?"

"I don't want to marry my fake cousin," was all that Lily said, again, not entirely sure why she was saying it at all. Except that Morgan, aside from being Morgan, also involved cousin weddings.

Wizard Lenin, for his own part, looked as if he had no idea what she was talking about either. Finally, with a rather defeated sigh, rubbing at the back of his head and staring out at the snake, he said, "Well, now I'm not staying here either."

"What?!" Lily asked, "But we just got down here!"

"That was before you blew up my basilisk," Wizard Lenin said, motioning for them to turn around, "I am not cleaning that thing up and if I wanted to read Salazar's ridiculously dry journals I would have done it when I was seventeen."

"This is bullshit, Lenin," Lily huffed as they began to slowly but surely backtrack to the Default common room.

"Yes, well, I blame you."

And that, as far as Lily was concerned, was the rather anticlimactic end of the chamber of secrets.

The unfortunate, unknown, consequence to Lily at the time was that when a diary wearing the body of a little girl would descend into the chamber, he would find the basilisk, and his one attempt at freedom and salvation, already slain.

This then, though Lily did not yet know it, was the story of Wizard Trotsky's plan b.

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 **Author's Note: Now, a story that is so long, so unwieldly, that I had to cut it down into baby sections because even an Act I was too damn long. Expect... more of these.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**


	2. Overture

"Now, now, put the books away, class, I have a very exciting new project for you all," Gilderoy Lockhart, as usual, was strutting about the classroom like an overly flamboyant peacock grinning at his entirely unenthused audience.

It was only the middle of October of Lily's second year and somehow she was already dying.

True, she didn't have to put up with Slytherin bullshit, and she supposed Default was alright enough. Certainly, she could handle moody Hermione, quirky cult member Luna Lovegood, Rabbit being… Rabbit, as well as the two latest Slytherin expatriates Zabini and Greengrass, but that didn't mean Hogwarts itself was doing anything to appeal to her either.

Either she was spending the day watching Wizard Lenin, somehow roped into being quidditch captain, or else time travelling backwards to sit through class, eyes drooping, and wondering if she could get any more bored than she already was.

Especially in Lockhart's class. If she had to hear another word about the majesty of Gilderoy Lockhart she didn't think she could be held responsible for her actions.

Glancing over, Lily looked at a good half of the female portion of the class from Pansy Parkinson, to Lavender Brown, to basically everyone who wasn't in Default were all but passed out and twitching on their desks with ink spilled all over the private little journals they'd received from whoever. Pansy hadn't stopped bragging since the start of October that glitter decorated magical diary was from Drakey-poo no matter Drakey-poos vehement protests. She'd also made sure to rub it in Hermione and Lily's collective faces that they had not received special diaries, and especially not one from her beloved Drakey-poo. Lily, it seemed, was even less of a fan of Pansy Parkinson than she'd been a year ago.

Hermione, for her own part, still drenched in the bitter pro-proletarian aftermath of last Christmas, was stubbornly reading through a far more legitimate book on countering the dark arts as if she was just daring Lockhart to stop her. Naturally, Lockhart did nothing of the kind, having decided back in September to let Hermione continue to Hermione in relative peace. Probably the safest course of action, all things considered.

Greengrass and Zabini were engaged in some sort of staring contest with a rather moody Draco Malfoy, who still didn't appreciate their jumping of ships from the legitimate Slytherin to that ragtag life boat Default, which left about maybe one or two students even looking in Lockhart's direction.

And one of those was Lily.

Most importantly though, the love of Gilderoy Lockhart, that had been very present in the first few weeks of class from the female half of the room and a spattering of the male half, seemed to have fizzled out completely into a rather depressing apathy and resignation that one could only usually find in History of Magic.

Jesus, Lily thought to herself as she glanced over towards the others once again, they were starting to make her look downright enthusiastic.

"Everyone, instead of boring homework, just before the end of term we will be putting on a musical!" Lockhart declared, spreading out flying flyers which then settled on each of their desks proclaiming a rather dramatic promotion for "Lockhart: The Musical to Unlock Your Heart" a musical that was apparently written, directed, and produced by one Gilderoy Lockhart.

"A musical?" Hermione asked, lowering her book ever so slightly so that she could glare more fully at Lockhart. However, Lockhart seemed entirely immune to Hermione's rather impressive withering glare and instead continued to expound with enthusiasm.

"Not just any musical, a musical that, with refinement, will open up in London's magical theater district this summer. Now, I thought, what better way to give a trial run than to do so in Hogwarts starring my wonderful students?"

"Is everyone going to be in this?" Daphne asked, looking down at the flyer as if she was torn between distaste and sheer bafflement.

"Yes, you see, I say a musical, but in fact each Hogwarts year will be starring in a different musical of the series of wild adventures from my life. There was far too much material to fit into one performance, you see," Lockhart explained as he, with a swish of his wand, projected onto the board an image of one of their required textbooks, which, if Lily remembered right, was the one where he had battled off an army of evil magic penguins in the North Pole and saved not only a magical Swedish princess but also Santa Claus and all of his elves.

Or maybe he just slayed some snow beast, Lily honestly could not remember.

Now, along with the flyers, a series of scripts appeared on each of their desks for "Lockhart: The Musical Vol. 2", undoubtedly Luna Lovegood and Rabbit Lepurson being subjected to whatever happened to be in volume one.

Lily flipped through, and immediately blanched. One thing that was obvious, the only good part was Gilderoy Lockhart, and that was only because he was about the only one to do or say anything remotely interesting. He dashed, he pranced, he was altogether charming, and that there were any other people in this play was to remind the audience how wonderful Gilderoy Lockhart was in case you had somehow managed to forget in the past five seconds.

More, there weren't nearly enough parts for everyone in second year, only about eight speaking parts (and that was with three different love interests all slammed into the same musical) which meant everyone else would probably be consigned to the pit orchestra or else set design and backstage help.

Still, it was better than Defense normally was. More, there was something almost… intriguing about it. Lily had never really starred in a theatrical production, well other than the secret theatrical production that was the life and times of Eleanor Lily Potter, but now that the possibility was dangled in front of her she found herself strangely excited about the prospect.

It might be kind of nice, she thought, to play someone else's hero for once. To be the charismatic, mysterious, and dashing Gilderoy Lockhart saving maidens from towers and monsters with witty one-liners to spare.

In fact, flipping through, finding his love ballads where he bemoaned his lack of attachment and connection to the human race even through sexual encounters as well as his great cry of despair over how it was so hard to be so wonderful and be the hero everyone expected and needed, Lily found she had a strange connection to Gilderoy Lockhart's fictional counterpart.

He was, in his own way, not so different from Eleanor Lily Potter, which was a role that Lily had been consigned to for so long but not once been recognized for.

Gilderoy Lockhart, for the same acts, for the same unending duty and tilting at windmills, could receive a standing ovation and roses thrown at his feet. Just once, she thought with some wonder, it might be nice to have the curtains come down on her show. Even if it really was just a play within a play.

"I'll do it!" Lily cried out, jumping onto her desk in triumph, "I will be Gilderoy Lockhart!"

Lockhart stared at her, blinking, and seemed at something of a loss at what to say. Finally, with a grimacing sort of half smile, he said, "I appreciate your enthusiasm, Ellie, but I'm afraid that the wonderful role of Gilderoy can only go to a male student."

"A male student like…" Lockhart's eyes roamed the room, searching for the golden prince that Hogwarts' current second year students were lacking, and finally in desperation settled on Draco Malfoy, unofficial prince of Slytherin, "Draco, yes, Draco will be an excellent Gilderoy Lockhart."

"What?!" Draco exclaimed as Lily fell off the desk in shock and despair, wondering how Draco, Draco bloody Malfoy of all people could possibly beat her out to that kind of role without even trying.

Clearly, if there ever was a Gilderoy Lockhart, then it had to be Eleanor Lily Potter. She was everything Gilderoy Lockhart embodied and then some. Lily had been preparing for the role of Lockhart her entire life!

Sitting up, picking herself off the floor, she was about to remind him of that but it appeared to be entirely too late as he was arbitrarily assigning roles to each of them, with Lily cast pitifully as the despairing third love interest, Aino, a poor girl from Finland with reindeer friends who Lockhart had cast aside in order to ride off into the sunset after having rid her village of the great abominable snowman that none before him had ever defeated and sings about how surely she will never love again now that the golden man has passed out of her life.

Which, of course, was better than Hermione's role as comedic relief reindeer number two.

Class soon ended after that, leaving Lily to trudge through the castle and think that her homework wasn't done because Wizard Lenin was refusing to help her with her essays because he was still being petty over the giant snake fiasco and just generally grumpy about being a crippled and now she wasn't Gilderoy Lockhart in the play and things just weren't turning out Lily.

Eventually, flipping through the script, Lily found herself instead of wandering upstairs to check on Wizard Lenin (which she probably should be doing at some point but given the whole time machine thing she had all the time in the world to do that) walking out towards the empty quidditch pitch to sit alone in the stands.

Flipping through until she found her part she stared out at the empty stands as if they were her stage, and cried out in despair, "But Gilderoy, without you in my life how will I ever love again?! Without you, my angel, I shall drown!"

The words reverberated, without meaning, without significance, and certainly without the necessary humanity and emotion that poor love interest number three must be feeling. Lily, huffing and sitting back on the bleachers, instead sorted through her half-written essays, falling upon one for Potions asking her to explain why crushed newt eyes made a potion spongier.

Naturally, Lily had no idea, especially since she hadn't actually made a potion by the original recipe since her first year. Lately she'd just started winging and cheating her way through the whole damn class, which was not doing wonders for her essay grades.

Lily groaned, flung herself backwards onto the bleachers to stare up at the overcast sky in resigned despair, "Oh Hogwarts, why do you have to hurt me so?"

Hogwarts, naturally, didn't answer.

However, to Lily's infinite surprise, something or someone that was not the ancient castle did.

"Because Hogwarts simply cannot appreciate you, Lily."

Lily jerked upwards, looking around at the still desperately empty stands and pitch, searching for the source of the voice. It was young, very likely a little girl's voice though it was a bit hard to tell without a face to accompany it, and it was also just a touch too fond and a bit too bitter.

There was so much… emotion underlying those words, particularly the last, Lily, it had been laced with nostalgia, yearning, but also something jaded and angry as if the last time that name had been used had not been entirely pleasant.

"Yes?" Lily finally asked, standing and brushing off her uniform as she still searched for the voice, "Can I help you?"

There was a pause, a rather ominous one, and then bright tinkling laughter that could hardly contain itself as if Lily had just told the punchline of the funniest joke the disembodied voice had ever heard.

And it was, Lily thought, disembodied. Lily had voices in her head, was very intimate with a voice in her head, but that didn't sound or feel the same as this. This was coming from somewhere else, somewhere nearby, but she just couldn't put her finger on the source.

"Of course you can, Lily, but I think the true question of the day is how I might be of some help to you."

Lily thought about that rather blankly for a moment, wondering if Hogwarts was trying to make up for its lack of weird in the past few months, it was running below the usual quota, and finally settled on, "I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers."

Again, that amused laugh, then, "No candy, Lily, I promise. However, if it makes you too uncomfortable to accept aid for nothing, how about a bargain instead?"

A bargain, well, that sounded shady as well, but at least there was the idea that the mysterious invisible voice would be getting something out of it as well. Lily shifted, prepared herself instinctively for battle, and asked, "What kind of a bargain?"

The voice, instead of answering directly, decided to go off on a wild and whimsical tangent, "Rumor has it you're one of the lead characters in Lockhart's second year play."

Rumor traveled very quickly, Lily thought, she'd only been assigned that this afternoon. Except, this didn't sound like the voice of anyone in Lily's class that she could name off the top of her head. Certainly, it wasn't Hermione's distinctive cynical or bossy snark, Greengrass' demure cynicism, or Pansy Parkinson's typical screech.

"And?" Lily asked.

"And you have potential," the voice continued, and Lily could easily imagine its lips curving into a smile, "But you lack heart. You could be great with a little bit of help."

"Help from you?" Lily asked, feeling her eyebrows rising dubiously, and wondering if she had somehow found the patron god of shitty high school musicals to guide her.

"Certainly," the voice said with a confidence that it probably didn't deserve, "I am reputed far and wide for my superb excellent abilities."

Lily wondered if it would be rude to point out that an invisible voice could not possibly be reputed far and wide about anything to anyone. However, when Hogwarts decided to get weird on you, it was usually best to just go along with it and get it over with already.

"More," the voice added, now with a little bit more enthusiasm since Lily wasn't running away screaming, "I can write your essays for you."

Well, that certainly got Lily's attention.

Lily held up her unfinished essay for Transfiguration, due in a hideous timeframe of two days with only the line, "What I learned in Transfiguration today is…" written at the top.

"Hold up," Lily said, "You mean you can write, you can finish this, for me?"

"With ease," the voice responded, sounding now a little proud as well as a little dismissive, as if Transfiguration essays were the easiest thing in the world and it could do it in its sleep. You know, if disembodied voices slept, or had the hands with which to write essays.

Still, with that kind of an answer, Lily wasn't quite sure she cared who this voice was or where it had come from and what it wanted. If it would do what Wizard Lenin was too proud and petty to then power to it.

She grinned, reached into her bag to pull out her supplies then stopped, narrowed her eyes into the vast emptiness and asked, "Wait a minute, this is a bargain, what do you want?"

The voice considered this for a few moments, mulling the words over, then said, "I want answers, I want to get to know you, who you really are beneath the pomp and circumstance of Eleanor Lily Potter. I want… so much, too much, but more than that I want devotion."

"Devotion?" Lily asked, not really liking that word or the way the voice breathed it, as if it too was in worship of the mere idea of devotion.

"Yes, devotion, to what I can teach you and what we can share together."

Lily considered that rather dubiously, wondering if that was something a stranger in an unmarked white van with candy might say to her, and then noted, "I'm not sure I can really do devotion."

"Then you will never be all that you can be on the stage," the voice noted, "Or, I believe, in Eleanor Lily Potter."

That, again, stopped her and she wondered how it was so perceptive. It, out of everyone besides Wizard Lenin, was the only one to see that Ellie Potter wasn't a name but an idea that was forced on her shoulders and one she constantly failed to live up to. Wizard Lenin had never given her a means of embracing it, or playing it fully, this voice, for whatever reason, was.

Still, Lily hesitated, thought over the words, then asked, "You mean like… devotion to you as in the patron saint of shitty high school plays?"

The voice hesitated, and she got the idea that it was somewhat affronted by that, but eventually it agreed, "I wouldn't have put it quite like that, but I suppose, if that's what you want to call me. It's not as if I wasn't the patron saint of shitty high school plays."

This last was a grumble and after it Lily caught mutterings of something called a slug club along with pandering to the aristocratic masses and goddamn them all I still didn't get rewarded for all that work.

Lily decided she wasn't even going to ask but instead just formalize their agreement, "Alright then, so if I agree to answer your questions and be devoted to you as my patron saint then you'll do my essays and make me not the worst in this play."

"Again, I would not put it quite like that, but yes," the voice said with a sigh, as if he knew that was about the best he was going to get. Then, oddly, after a pause, it said with that returning fondness, "I truly have missed you, Lily."

Lily wasn't sure when she was gone long enough to have been missed by anyone, or if during her absence last year, anyone aside from Neville and maybe Hermione had really missed her. Then, Lily was caught on that name again, hesitating, "Why do you call me that, Lily, I mean?"

And it laughed again, and she could almost feel its delighted grin, "Because what else, Lily, could I possibly call you?"

That wasn't an answer, she thought, but it was probably the best damn answer she was going to get and Lily really did want those essays done and wasn't about to say no to not embarrassing herself in front of the collected student body. So, she just nodded, held out her hand as if to shake the voice's, and said, "Alright then, we have a deal."

No one shook her hand back, but the bargain was made all the same.

 **Author's Note: Brace your inboxes people.**


	3. Think of Me

Prior to Lockhart's great pet project, Lily had no idea that Hogwarts even had an auditorium, nonetheless, if you turned enough corners and went through enough hallways you'd find a stage big enough to entertain the entire school.

This, since the first announcement of the musical, was where Defense had relocated itself and Defense classes were substituted for rehearsal.

As usual Pansy Parkinson was glaring mulishly at Lily from her seat in the auditorium, rather upset that she hadn't been cast in the play at all, especially not opposite her own personal love interest Draco Malfoy, but was instead in charge of making things on the set work smoothly.

When she wasn't glaring mulishly she was furiously venting inside of her glitter infested diary where the ink, oddly, would always disappear after every few seconds into the pages as if it was drinking them down like wine. It was for the best, Lily thought, given that they were probably death threats to Lily herself.

Hermione, having fulfilled her duty for the day as the comedic relief reindeer, was now seething in her own seat and almost desperately reading through her latest and greatest book on memory charms and their effects, probably trying to pretend she was somewhere else entirely.

Which left Draco and Lily on stage for the practice of their final scene and the finale of the musical once again. Except, for the first time since they'd done initial read throughs, Gilderoy Lockhart, their fearless writer, director, and producer, seemed genuinely captivated by what he was seeing on the stage.

The trick, Lily had finally figured out after one too many private sessions with her invisible voice friend, the patron saint of shitty high school musicals, was to see anything but Draco Malfoy pretending to be Gilderoy Lockhart on the stage.

Even Gilderoy Lockhart, or the written idealized version of him, would not do.

"The art of lying, the true art, is that a part of it must be true," the voice had said, ignoring the cold weather as Lily shivered, as it always insisted on talking to her on the quidditch pitch when no one in their right mind would be outside, "A part of you must believe in it yourself as much as everyone else. When you think on the agony of Aino and her despair, do not imagine it as the despair of losing Gilderoy Lockhart, but instead all that he represents. He is the golden hope in your life, a miracle that appeared out of desolation, and when he is gone you know that only the bitter wind and pine trees will remain. His leaving is not just the end of him in your life, the love you could have had, but the end of you."

So, what did Gilderoy Lockhart of the play represent to Lily, in the end, it was easy. He was Wizard Lenin, Wizard Lenin who so soon would be walking out the door and out of her life and perhaps would never look back. And when he did, when he did, what would be left for Lily but desolation and despair? What would be left but Hogwarts and the charade of life and meaning?

So, to Malfoy in the guise of Gilderoy Lockhart, she could say the words that she could never say to Wizard Lenin.

"Please," she said, and the word was a whisper, and she could imagine the effects of the stage that would exist as snow would pile around them and catch in her red hair, "Please, I will go with you to England and…"

She waited, trailed off and waited for Draco to remember his line as he continued to stare at her, eyes wide like he wasn't sure what he was seeing and didn't know how to deal with it.

"Malfoy!" Gilderoy barked from off-stage, "You're ruining the mood! Remember your cues!"

Malfoy flushed, fiddled with his paper, then started reading the lines he still didn't have quite memorized, and blandly said, "Oh, Aino, my dear, you know there is no path for us…"

"Gilderoy," Lily interjected, not stepping forward, not moving at all but instead standing there listless and frozen as if she had already known that one couldn't hold sunlight in their hands, "Don't go, without you I have…"

"You have so much," Draco said, but there was no real emotion or connection in his voice, in fact there was almost an embarrassment in there as if he couldn't really believe he was doing this. From the audience, Lily could hear the Slytherins snickering, causing Draco to flush so much harder.

"Wind, ice, a night sky filled with rainbows, I will have everything I ever had before, but Gilderoy, it wasn't until I found you that I realized nothing was ever there in the first place. Without you, I am drowning, sinking deeper and deeper beneath all the things that once meant so much to me. If you go, if you leave me, I will vanish."

And, as usual, this was about when one of the set pieces decided it was high time to try to murder Draco Malfoy. Lily leapt forward, pushing him out of the way, just as the magically painted backdrop of snow and the aurora crashed down onto the stage right where Draco had been standing.

"Merlin's balls!" Draco shouted, scrambling out from under Lily and shaking while Lockhart and the other students, Pansy in particular, were leaping forward to see if Drakey-poo was still in mint condition.

Lily, for her own part, as always, was staring up at the ceiling where the backdrop had crashed down from, listening for somebody's footsteps, anything, but as usual it might as well have been a ghost.

"I can't do this, I can't bloody do this!" Draco Malfoy was saying, shaking his head in disbelief over and over again.

"Draco," Lockhart said, "I know we've had a bit of a run of bad luck but…"

"That's three bloody times this week!" Draco said, "Every time we have this class I'm almost gutted or crushed or something and I'm sick and tired of it! I didn't even want to be in this bloody play in the first place! I can't even sing!"

This was true, Draco Malfoy could not sing, but apparently Lockhart's desperation for a male lead left him no other real option. Lockhart grimaced, patted Draco consolingly on the shoulder, and said, "Well, these things do happen."

Malfoy gaped at him, "Not to Draco Malfoy they don't! Wait until I write my father and…"

Before Malfoy could revert to his usual threat of involving Lucius Malfoy in things he had no interest in Lily caught the note that, once again, was fluttering down from the rafters, "Professor, we've got another note."

She could almost hear Lockhart's dismayed frown, his deflating in resignation and fear, and it was in a rather reedy voice entirely unlike him that he said, "Well, Ellie, I suppose you had better hand it to me."

Lily, on her way to deposit it in Lockhart's hand, quickly read through the latest and greatest death threat to Gilderoy Lockhart and cast.

As usual the intimidating and elegant signature of "The Heir of Slytherin" decorated the bottom, along with a rather caustic note lamenting Draco's acting abilities, Hermione Granger's utter lack of enthusiasm, Lockhart's inability to direct even an amateur production, and, once again, a plea that Lily (the only decent actor in this entire goddamn school) instead be cast into the lead role of Gilderoy Lockhart along with a rather vague threat that, should Lily not be cast into said role, a disaster beyond imagination would occur.

The heir of Slytherin had been sending notes for a good few weeks now, really ever since this whole play business had started up, and one always was certain to turn up to Lockhart at some point during their rehearsals, usually after Draco Malfoy had nearly died.

Draco Malfoy, once again, was spluttering, "I bet it's a bloody mudblood, the real heir of Slytherin would never threaten a Malfoy…"

"Detention, Draco," Lockhart chided as he, with a rather worried expression, read through the latest and greatest note. Draco Malfoy, however, was more than past his limit, and after how many times it had happened Lily wasn't entirely sure she blamed him.

"Detention, right, well you know what, professor?! I quit! I quit your stupid play, and your stupid cast, and I will write my father and the board of directors and you will be fired!" Draco said, dramatically exiting the theater with goons Crabbe and Goyle scuttling after him. The door, after him, slammed shut leaving the rest of them blinking in relative silence.

"So," Lily said rather dumbly, "That went well."

No one had anything to say to that.

Once again, unlike the first time, there was no question of who the heir of Slytherin could possibly be, no question of looking for them, and just a mumble of agreement that they should probably tell Dumbledore again. Not that Dumbledore had done anything about it, he'd just given them all a slightly worried look, had pinned Lily with a very strong look, and then sent them on their way so that he could brood properly.

They all seemed rather trapped, as if none of them quite knew what to do, haunted by this unknown phantom…

Lily, awkwardly, now fully out of character, broke the silence, "So, if Draco isn't going to be Lockhart then…"

Lockhart looked pained, probably trying not to think that the best and only person in their class that could play himself was a twelve-year-old girl, but eventually conceded, "I suppose so, you know the lines?"

"Professor, please," Lily said with a hand to her heart and a compassionate, heartfelt, smile on her face, "I have them bloody well memorized."


	4. Angel of Music

"Guess who's Lockhart, bitch?!" Lily said as she dramatically waltzed into Wizard Lenin's humble abode, now fully furnished and stacked with books from all over the library. Wizard Lenin, as usual, did not give this the appreciation it was clearly due as he didn't even look up from his rather thick textbook on transfiguration.

"Lenin, seriously, a wonderful thing has happened," Lily said as she moved over to him and forcefully shut the book he was reading closed, waiting until he could look her directly in the eyes while she grinned at him.

Finally, his eyes met her, a pale and striking blue as always even as he gave her an irritated look, "What?"

"Well, Malfoy nearly died again so that wasn't so great," Lily said, but then motioned to herself, "But I now have the lead role in our ridiculous school play in his stead. You're looking, comrade, at the new and improved Gildeory Lockhart."

Wizard Lenin stared for a moment, rather blandly, before remarking rather drily, "I had forgotten that Defense Against the Dark Arts somehow turned into an excuse for musical theater."

"Well, it's better than what it used to be," Lily said with a shrug, as she'd take musical theater any of day of the week compared to Lockhart's usual teaching method of throwing dangerous magical creatures at them while he hid under a desk.

"Somehow, I sincerely doubt that," Wizard Lenin said with a scoff, needing as always to retain his title of supreme cynic, "And you were the best they had?"

"Actually, yes," Lily said, because as it was she was fairly certain she was now much better at this whole acting shindig than even the upper year students, maybe even Cedric Diggory who was playing the role of Lockhart in the seventh-year production, and that was the one with the plot involving vampires in the Eastern Bloc.

Now Wizard Lenin looked really dubious, even tilting his head a little to the side to give her that suspicious half-squinting look, "You, Lily, were the best they had to play Gilderoy Lockhart."

And now Lily was somewhat offended, crossing her arms, and noting, "I'll have you know that I am a great actress."

Seriously, even at the start, Lily hadn't been the worst. Wizard Lenin clearly hadn't witnessed the excruciating second-hand embarrassment that was Draco Malfoy trying to maintain his dignity while also pretending to be Lockhart or else Hermione Granger being told to be funny.

"You're one of the worst actors I've ever seen," Wizard Lenin barked, now putting his book entirely to the side entirely without any pretense of picking it back up, "And you're forgetting that I've been front row and center for every single travesty of a performance you were put through in elementary school."

Of which there really weren't that many, Lily wanted to say, although there had been enough that he maybe had a point. Lily had been cast, out of pity, as one of the various nativity animals each and every year at Christmas with her last performance before Hogwarts being in the role of the jackass.

Wizard Lenin, at the time, had remarked that Lily had probably never played a more apt role in her life. Lily had just kind of wished she'd still been a sheep or could somehow get upgraded to the Virgin Mary.

"Well, that was before," Lily huffed, flopping down into the chair opposite Wizard Lenin's before the fake fireplace that was crackling with unnatural blue and green flames.

"Before what?"

"Before I met the patron saint of shitty high school musicals," Lily said, and Wizard Lenin blinked, blinked again, looking at her like he hadn't quite heard her right.

Finally, he asked, "You met what?"

"Oh," Lily said in realization, "Have I never told you about that? Well, a few weeks ago when this all started, and you weren't helping with my essays and I'd been assigned my part I wandered out to the quidditch pitch, entirely empty of people mind you, and ran into this invisible voice person who's the patron saint of shitty high school musicals."

"An invisible voice person," Wizard Lenin parroted, "Who claims to be the saint of shitty high school musicals."

"Well, I said that, he more or less agreed," Lily clarified, as that probably would be important to Wizard Lenin, except her friend the patron saint really had come to embrace his new-found role as her acting instructor and savior of Hogwarts' musical theater.

He actually was kind of a taskmaster in a way that, eerily, reminded her something of Wizard Lenin. If Wizard Lenin was younger, had slightly more passion for your every day non-revolutionary events rather than his usual apathetic contempt, then she imagined that he and the voice could sound nearly identical. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes, and ignored the pitch of the voice, she could imagine it was Wizard Lenin speaking to her about something he cared entirely too much about that no one else did.

"I'll bet he did," Wizard Lenin scoffed, sounding a bit too unsurprised by that for Lily's liking, "But who is it really?"

Lily paused, frowned, then admitted, "I actually have no idea."

That, according to Wizard Lenin's expression, was not the correct answer, "What?"

Still, it was true.

It'd been weeks now, but Lily still had no idea. She couldn't place the voice or even the way he talked among anyone she knew, maybe Wizard Lenin, but that was only a distant sort of relationship that really had nothing to do with the sound of the voice. For all Lily knew he really was a ghost or a saint, who just happened to be able to write Lily's essays for her.

The only thing that was a bit odd about it, or at least how Lily considered the whole situation, was that Lily had transitioned from referring to the voice as it to he. She'd had no real reason to, no revelation of masculinity, but nonetheless something about the way it spoke, the soul of the voice rather than the pitch, that felt very masculine to her.

And "he" hadn't felt like the wrong pronoun to use.

"But if he keeps doing my homework and gives me some acting lessons on the side I can't really complain," Lily said with a shrug, because, given all that, Lily really couldn't give a damn either way who her mysterious instructor was.

Wizard Lenin looked as if he was very much of the opposite opinion, "And he's doing this… for free?"

"Well, no, not really," Lily admitted with yet another shrug, "He asks me questions, things like my favorite color, my favorite flower, why I left Slytherin, why I like Neville Longbottom but not Ron Weasley, you know, weird things like that. Oh, and he also demands my utter devotion, whatever that means."

Predictably, Wizard Lenin did not take that last bit well and was now gaping at her as if each detail she let slip of her and the voice's little bargain was that much worse, "Your what?"

"I know, I know, I was a bit iffy on that last one too but I set up a little altar to him in the Default common room, put up a few candles, burned some incense, set up an iconograph and I figured I'm good to go," Lily said with her hands held up in defense to ward off Wizard Lenin's complaints, "And it's not like I really pray to any other saints, or even acknowledge them, so this is about as devoted as I can get. In fact, I'd say it's pretty damn devoted."

Wizard Lenin said nothing for a moment, just stared at her, and then slowly, as if he was talking to an idiot summarized everything she'd just said, "An invisible voice, who claims to be the patron saint of amateur underage productions, has taught you how to act and finishes your homework in return for your answering his inane questions and your utter devotion?!"

On the word 'devotion' his calm demeanor cracked, and his typical paranoid rage and frustration began to leak through. Lily, however, had no idea what his issue was. Well, she did, but he had to remember where he was and who he was talking to.

"It's Hogwarts," Lily said dully, "Honestly, Lenin, what were you expecting?"

As usual, that got him going, "Hogwarts was not like this when I attended!"

"I know," Lily said with the slightest roll of her eyes, having heard the whole glory days of Hogwarts tirade more than once before, "When you attended Hogwarts you walked uphill in the snow both ways, meanwhile, I become friends with disembodied voices and battle evil squirrels for giant paperweights."

Lily waved him off before he could even think to interrupt, concluding for him, "The important thing, Lenin, is I don't have to write my Potions essays."

He looked like he wanted to respond to that, he looked like he dearly wanted to respond to that, wanted to have some witty one-liner that would convince Lily that this was not how Hogwarts was supposed to work and something was going terribly wrong, disregarding completely that of course it was going terribly wrong because it was Hogwarts. However, he lacked the words, so just huffed and shook his head, and reopened his book like he was somehow above all this Hogwarts shenanigans.

Which, since it was Hogwarts, he probably was.

"Just tell me if it gets a little too out of hand, won't you?"

And Lily, in return, grinned and silently gave her word to do just that.


	5. Little Lotte and the Mirror

Although, Lily thought as later, decked out in sweaters and waterproof glitches and stepping out into the pouring rain to walk to the quidditch pitch, perhaps she'd been underselling the devotion bit to Wizard Lenin.

It wasn't that it really bothered her, or it was more alarming and surreal than Hogwarts usually was, but, well…

When you started receiving notes appearing out of nowhere, telling you a time and a place where nobody else in their right mind would go, and were expected to show up then with the threat of never having essays written for you again even Lily couldn't admit that it wasn't somewhat alarming.

Mostly, she found it vaguely irritating.

Oh, it hadn't been so bad at first. Then it'd just been every afternoon or so, usually outside at the deserted quidditch pitch, sometimes in a deserted classroom if the weather was bad enough, sometimes even in the dungeon bathroom that served as the entrance to the chamber of secrets, but then the hours had sometimes started being in the middle of the night or at hideous times in the morning.

And then, one time, on receiving a note to meet at three a.m. on the edge of the lake, Lily had decided to just can the whole thing and go back to bed. The next morning at breakfast she'd been treated to a rather intimidating howler, even for her, who promised her the eternal damnation of never living up to her potential and forever only being a two-dimensional character stuck in a play she didn't understand and that if she wasn't going to take this seriously then he was going to take all of his toys away and go home, dammit!

His toys, of course, being his cheating on Lily's behalf for all her classes.

Which, on the one hand, it was kind of weird and a little terrifying, but on the other hand essays so… Well, Lily kept on going.

Plus, and maybe it was weird, but she kind of liked the voice. Granted, it was a bit… intense. She also sometimes had this feeling that maybe the voice was… Well, she didn't know. But there was a tang of something in the air, a scent of… romance, nothing Lily could quite put her finger on, but something that spoke of the voice's devotion to her as well as her devotion to it that was just vaguely uncomfortable.

However, that said, he had a passion that you couldn't help but admire, even for inane things that no one in their right mind would care about. More, he cared about her. At first Lily had thought it was something of an act or a hoax or a ploy to get her to do something on his behalf and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it never did. There were so few people that cared about Lily in any true respect, and even among those, she knew more than a fair share of them would use her for their own benefit.

It was so easy, after all, that was what Eleanor Lily Potter had been born to do.

The voice didn't though, didn't even really see her as Ellie Potter, but instead saw the girl-who-lived as a strange sort of after-thought and epithet as if it had known her and cared long before the whole Ellie Potter business got involved.

And that wasn't just refreshing, Lily thought, but the foundation of something very real that she didn't want to brush aside.

So, she marched out into the pouring rain, grumbling slightly, but didn't turn back to the castle and made sure that she wasn't late (as he loathed tardiness almost as much as he loathed distraction).

It'd alarm Wizard Lenin, if she'd given all the juicy details, but it wasn't really his problem to begin with. As far as Lily was concerned, he didn't need to know, not when he was just going to up and leave at some point anyway.

Finally, she arrived, and as was typical, the place was absolutely deserted without a hint of anyone in sight. She rubbed her hands together, shoved them into her pockets, and rocking back and forth from heel to toe waited for the typical dramatic entrance of her rather eccentric tutor.

(If Wizard Lenin was dramatic, she thought, then this guy put him to complete shame and that was without even a body.)

"Lily," and as was also typical, the voice was right against her ear, and goddammit she could almost feel the breath of the words. Lily stiffened, pitched forward, and caught herself before she could tumble down the stands.

Looking back balefully at the empty air behind her, Lily said, "I thought we agreed you weren't going to do that."

She also had the distinct impression, even thought here was no noise and no human body, that it was laughing at her.

"Forgive me," it said, now a safer distance away as if they were having a conversation like normal people, "I couldn't contain myself."

Yeah, Lily bet he couldn't. With a sigh she plopped down onto the seat, tilting backwards and staring up at the thick sheets of rain, "You know, this wouldn't be an issue if you weren't so secretive about your body."

There was a truly awkward silence after that, one where the silence itself seemed to almost have a sound.

That… came out wrong, Lily thought with a flush, and then added, "I mean, if you showed up and talked like a real person instead of a mysterious voice."

The pause faded into something more contemplative and Lily could almost imagine him thinking. For whatever reason, in her head, she assigned him Wizard Lenin's body. Not so much Wizard Lenin as he was now, but how he might have looked when he was younger, a more hopeful wide-eyed cast to his expression before the years had worn him into something far more cynical and jaded.

She wondered if he'd deny it, that there was a real body somewhere out there diligently writing her essays and projecting his voice to meet with her. He could, she supposed, but Lily had her fair share of meetings with the incorporeal and she didn't get the same feeling from him. If Wizard Lenin, after all, had been capable of writing her essays then he would have made moves in the wizarding world long before now.

Finally, the voice said, "I'm afraid, Lily, that if we were to meet face to face you would only see the mask."

"The mask?" Lily asked, wanting to point out that it was more than overkill to not only be invisible but to also have a mask on top of that.

"A temporary but necessary measure," he insisted, almost with embarrassment, as if the fact that it was necessary shamed him, "It's not that I don't want to meet face to face, Lily, in fact, every day I want it more even though I know that we haven't met yet, not really. But… It wouldn't be me, not yet."

That… She wasn't sure how she felt about that actually. She frowned a bit, sitting up to look to her left, towards where the voice itself was sounding, still imagining Wizard Lenin's body on top of him now wearing one of his more oddly morose and defeated expressions. The kind of expression, Lily thought, that Wizard Lenin wore when thinking about death, purgatory, and all his unkept promises.

Mostly though, she found herself caught on his words, and asked, "How is it temporary?"

"Oh, no, Lily, we're not talking about my masks tonight," he said with an entirely too amused laugh, "No, tonight is for you and your victory. Rumor has it that you're to take the lead in this little play of yours."

"Oh, right, that," Lily said blinking, reminded again that the role of Gilderoy Lockhart was hers in all its glory, "Very exciting stuff, too bad about Malfoy nearly having to die three times for me to get it."

The voice actually had the nerve to guffaw, and she could imagine the delighted grin on his face, "Since when do you care about the likes of Draco Malfoy?"

"Well, I suppose I don't," Lily had certainly threatened him with violent retribution a little too many times do be defined as someone who gave a shit about his wellbeing, "But, I don't know, it just seemed so… needless."

"Please, it was hardly needless," the voice dismissed, "It should be considered a mercy not to have to watch him prance on stage pretending to be some sort of gilded prince. No, ironic as it sounds, that role belonged to you and you alone."

"…Thanks," Lily said after a moment's pause, wondering why she was getting the idea that maybe her mysterious voice was a little too invested in Draco's departure from Defense Against the Dark Arts and its grand production.

It was true, Lily supposed, but none the less it was… Unnerving to hear it said to her quite like that and from this source. After all, she thought after a moment's pause, no one had seen the heir of Slytherin, the only phantom to haunt the halls of Hogwarts, either.

"You know, it amazes me," and here there was almost a note of awe in the voice, "How they all seem to look past you entirely. I don't know if it's just that they're so used to you, or you're so far outside of their norm that they refuse to see it, but it seems like I'm the only one in this castle who can see you for what you are."

"And what's that?" Lily asked, feeling her eyebrows raise, and in the back of her head she wondered when they were going to get around to lessons or essays or questions or something that wasn't this conversation.

"Isn't it obvious?" he asked, "You're the prince, Lily. You're what Gilderoy Lockhart aspires to be, even more so because you know it's a role forced onto you, in living up to that image you surpass its inherent nobility."

That was oddly flattering, particularly because Lily had never really thought of herself as noble. In fact, Wizard Lenin had told her more often than not that she was anything but noble. No, no that wasn't quite it, he'd called her anything but Hufflepuff. Still, it had never occurred to her, though, that maybe in the sheer effort of living up to Eleanor Lily Potter Lily could take some of her prescribed radiant qualities for herself.

And here he'd said it so easily, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and that only someone blind could have possibly missed it.

Against her own will, Lily felt herself blushing at the praise ever so slightly.

He kept going though, as if he hadn't noticed Lily's reaction, "I suppose that your vulgar, muggle, attitude doesn't help things. Your blunt pragmatism also more than likely gets in the way. And your sheer raw power terrifies anyone who has the capacity to look past all of that. Still though, I hadn't thought, when I came here, that I'd be the only one."

All Lily could think to say, staring into empty space, was a woefully inadequate, "Thank you."

The silence this time was an easier more comfortable thing. It probably should have been interrupted by something more productive, but Lily was content to let it lie, even if it was cold and raining, and even if they both probably had other places to be and other people to see. This moment, in its own way, belonged to the pair of them and Lily thought it was more than fine to let it linger.

It was the voice that broke the silence. It was oddly tentative, younger sounding, to the point where its higher pitch was more glaring than usual as he said, "You know there is… There is a way that we can meet face to face."

"I thought you didn't want that," Lily said, eyebrows raising, and she could hear his hesitation as if this was mostly correct yet not quite and pained him for it.

"I said I didn't want you to meet me out here, in this place, where I'm… Wearing a face that isn't mine," he settled on rather lamely, as if this wasn't quite how he wanted to put it, but he lacked a better term for it.

"But we can meet somewhere else," he said, excitement and anticipation entering his voice now, "You could come into my kingdom, if only for a little while."

"Your kingdom?" Lily asked, wondering if she was supposed to know where that was, but the voice didn't seem to care.

"Yes, mine, more than Hogwarts or England or any other world ever has been," he said, and then, the voice right next to her ear again, he whispered, "You, Lily, can enter the confines of my very soul."

Lily instinctively leaned away, swatted at her ear as if swatting after the buzzing of a fly that had already flown away, and then thought it over. That sounded… She didn't know what that sounded like, but something dangerous, something irrevocable, and yet somehow the world she was in had taken a surreal edge to it so that stepping into other worlds after voices did not seem so strange.

"Come, Lily," he said, and she could almost imagine a hand outstretched, but as she reached out instead of flesh it was a slip of paper that fell between her fingertips, "Come and I will show you things these people wouldn't believe: attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate."

Opening the sheet of paper with shaking fingers Lily watched as a single command blossomed from black ink, "Write."

And Lily, with only a moment's hesitation, sparing a glance back towards the lights of Hogwarts and all the people who waited inside, took a ball point pen and wrote a simple, stark, "Yes."

And then the world tilted backwards, gravity slipped away, and the quidditch pitch faded into the rain like tears, to be lost and forgotten as the world kept moving onwards forever and always. Then, just like that, Lily wasn't in Hogwarts at all.


	6. The Phantom of the Opera

She fell into a Slytherin common room that was not the Slytherin common room. The air was too light, the colors brighter than Lily remembered, the greens thousands of different shades that melded into the silver, and the crackling of the fire set an odd warm glow about the place that gave it a softer and more romantic edge.

The room was filled with unfamiliar faces, yet, with a degree of familiarity to them as if they held traces of Slytherins she knew in Hogwarts. There was a hint of Malfoy in a blonde aristocrat, Crabbe's bloated features… Yet, not one of them even glanced towards her, as if unaware of her presence.

Then, out of nowhere, a hand on hers, and Wizard Lenin's face out of nothing with that delighted smile she'd never seen but had imagined on the strange voice, "Come on, Lily, there are worlds to see yet beyond Hogwarts."

He was younger, only a few years older than her, dressed in prefect's robes and a younger zeal and passion that Wizard Lenin couldn't always muster, and yet the essence of Wizard Lenin was inside of him, as if he and Wizard Lenin had been forged from the same base material.

His hand, pulling hers, was warm.

As they moved Hogwarts began to melt away, the people, the Slytherin common room, and as he promised a whole kingdom opened before them. They walked on a pathway made of glittering stars, torches held by angels to light their path, while below them Lily could stare down and see the solar system arrayed like stepping stones across a vast river.

Then they were climbing a great white tower towards the sun, up and up a spiral staircase while below them the scenery unfolded into rolling green hills and white tipped mountains, everywhere in the air there was the scent of roses and that this was a world of princes and dragons.

"Is this really your face?" Lily asked as the sun rose over the mountains, bright and golden and shining in his dark hair, catching in his pale eyes and making them glow an almost unnatural color.

"Without any of the masks," he agreed, and his smile… It was such a strange smile, so terribly fond, content, and yet somehow anticipatory as if he had been waiting for this longer than he could even remember.

"But who are you?"

"A memory," he said shortly, but his voice was filled with conviction as he added, "And yet far more than that."

Lily felt as if she was in some sort of strange haze, almost in a dream herself, and her voice felt far away as she said, "But you're not Voldemort."

His hand in hers, still so warm and solid, almost distracted her from the strange cast to his eyes and the mirthful twist to his lips, "There are more powers in this world, Lily, than Lord Voldemort."

At the top of the tower they stopped, a river appearing in the air and a gondola inside, he ushered her into it, sat her down, then pushed off from the white marble bank and into the sunrise, the water red and golden with the nearly blinding light.

"But you know my name," Lily continued, "Not just Ellie Potter but…"

"Yes," he said, and there was pride it, pride and hunger and devotion, that same overwhelming devotion that he in turn had asked of her, "I know your name, I know it and remember it even when they stuffed you into the role of my damnation. I will always, Lily, remember your name."

"But why?"

When he looked down at her the sun was behind him, casting him into blinding light, so that he almost looked as if he himself were made of that same burning light. Like he was a divine being, an angel perhaps, that had brought Lily up into the river of heaven.

"Lily," his voice curled around her name, at once jarringly familiar and unfamiliar all at once, "How could I do anything less?"

With that, and a motion of his hand, Lily felt a crown of lilies weaving themselves into her hair, white, orange, and red as he smiled down at her. Glancing over the boat into the water she noted that her face had changed, was older and thinner, and that the rest of her body was longer and taller as well.

"I thought I was the prince," Lily said absently, her eyes caught on her own unfamiliar reflection, hypnotized by the brightness of her own green eyes.

"You are," he said with a laugh even as he continued to row them forward, "But we all have our duality, you are both the prince apparent, Lily, as well as the goddess."

The goddess, she thought distantly, she had been called that or something similar and yet the word felt foreign here, not unnatural but strange in her ears.

Lily turned from her reflection, looked ahead, and noted that they were arriving towards some shore. A great glittering domain of burning stars caught upon candles wicks, of glittering machines and chandeliers, and a pathway paved of precious stones.

"My emerald city," he said with fondness, and again, with pride, as if he had been waiting for centuries to show her this. As if he had been waiting, she thought with some odd wonder, since before she was even born.

And just like that, the gondola reached the shore, and with a hand reached out towards her, he helped her off.


	7. The Music of the Night

As he pulled her forward Lily noted that the air, suddenly, had an oddly colorful tint to it as if there were intangible pains of stained glass which the light passed through, so that colors fell onto her and this younger, stranger, Wizard Lenin in reds, greens, and vivid blues.

On reaching the center, a great and gilded throne formed of marble, gold leaf, and crystal all intertwined, he grinned towards her and motioned out towards his kingdom, "I have brought you, Lily, to the seat of my very soul. To this kingdom where all must be homage to light, to memory, and to the potential of things."

He grabbed her forward, hands resting on her pale shoulders, suddenly bare as her clothing had changed from simple sweaters and a skirt to an elegant gown that one might expect from a fairy princess. Looking into her eyes, his own so bright and so blue, he insisted, "You have come here, for one purpose and one alone…"

He trailed off, drew closer, almost too close yet in this world that did not seem so unnatural as he almost pleaded, "Since the moment I first met you, over fifty years ago, I have repeated over and over and over how we would meet again. How I would come to find you and bring you into my world again…"

He turned his eyes to their surroundings, his eyes glittering with the jewels and the stars, "Look how it shines for you, Lily, even now, even after all these years and all these failed plays I have written for myself. See how… easily, you fit inside it, can transform into it."

He pulled her forward once again, towards the throne so he could sit her inside of it, "You don't need the garish light of Hogwarts, Lily, we both know that it does not suit you. Turn your thoughts away from the petty dramas they force upon you, Lily. Listen instead to the music that rings out in this place, my soul, for you."

Kneeling before her on one knee, oddly looking like a prince himself, he said, "Close your eyes, Lily, and purge your thoughts of the life you knew before. Say the word and it is gone, a snap of your fingers, and we are done with this place and the world is our oyster. And we will both finally be all that we ever had the potential of being…"

Words were absent from her, not just lodged in her throat, but curiously gone. She felt as if she almost wasn't truly here but was instead watching a play starring this older stranger version of herself, this girl who matched this younger Wizard Lenin in age and was all that she had the potential to become.

Except, here, she felt as if she had cast into any role but Gilderoy Lockhart.

"We do not have to be damned to eternity, Lily," he whispered, taking her hand, pale and slender, into his and speaking against it. His lips, so terribly warm, and they curved into a smile as he insisted, "Together I do believe we can transcend it."


	8. I Remember & Stranger Than You Dreamt It

It was to stuttering gasping and a ridiculously large headache that Lily found herself coming to in a place that both was and wasn't familiar.

It wasn't familiar because it wasn't where she remembered being last or a place she wouldn't blink twice at waking up in. Namely, it wasn't the quidditch pitch in the pouring rain but it also wasn't the Default common room or Wizard Lenin's own cupboard beneath the stairs.

However, it was familiar in that she'd been here once before.

Groaning, Lily picked herself up and blearily stared about at the innermost heart of the chamber of secrets, that single walkway over a black stagnant lake, lit only by the torches on the wall and guarded by stone serpents.

Her eyes fell on the empty stones near the front, where the carved face of Salazar Slytherin was, and she was disconcerted until she remembered that a dead basilisk was supposed to be rotting there. However, it was gone, like it'd never been there in the first place.

Looking down, her clothes weren't as filthy as she would have expected, or rather, they didn't look like anything had happened. Like she had somehow been transported from the quidditch pitch all the way down here.

And she… Didn't quite remember how that had happened.

There had been the voice, yes, an oddly intimate and rather touching conversation, then the invitation and…

"And I remember there was mist," Lily said, not mist in the place, it had almost glowed with light, but there had been mist all the same, "Swirling mist that was really the illusion of light and a river. There were candles all around and on the river there was a boat, and in the boat there was Lenin…"

A more aware, prickling, curiosity and anxiety overtook her that had been absent in the kingdom made of paper and ink. She stepped forward, arms crossing over themselves as she hunched forward, eyes looking for someone, "Except, he wasn't Lenin and he wasn't the other one so who… Who was wearing his face like a mask?"

She stepped forward again, not out of the chamber but instead further in, into the tunnel that served as Salazar Slytherin's mouth, almost with desperation as she searched for her strange tutor who was now horrifically familiar in the worst of ways.

She passed ancient libraries, likely the libraries Wizard Lenin had mentioned the last time they were down here, ancient potions laboratories as well as alchemic and transfiguration workshops, places that no doubt had once made Wizard Lenin's heart giddy with joy. She spared only a glance for each, rushing forward and searching, the sword of Gryffindor materializing out of her will and panic into her hand.

Then, at the room at the very end of the dark tunnel of Salazar Slytherin's, she skidded to a halt as her mind shorted out at what she was seeing. It was a shrine, but it was nothing like the shrine that, with a shrug of her shoulders, she had dedicated to her patron saint of acting.

It took up almost the entire room, small flickering candles everywhere, and in the frame thousands upon thousands of drawn blinking portraits and a small collection of photographs of herself, from adolescence into the mysterious confines of adulthood all staring at her with eyes that were impossibly green.

And to her left, dressed upon a mannequin that was far taller than she was, what looked like a wedding dress.

"You just couldn't stay put for five minutes, could you Lily?" Lily whirled, blade in hand, and caught the eye of a little girl staring dully at her.

It was…

"Ginny Weasley?" Lily asked, because it was, it was Ron's little sister, unsurprisingly in Gryffindor. She wasn't necessarily plain, but she wasn't extraordinary either, her hair a dark somber red, freckles dotting her face, dressed in her Hogwarts uniform, but it was the expression that caught Lily's eye.

It wasn't the sort of expression that suited Ginny Weasley.

"Not quite," Ginny responded, almost amused by Lily's question, "Ginny's not at the wheel at the moment."

"Ginny's not…"

"This is what I wanted to avoid," Ginny said with a huff, more than annoyance, a true agitation and nervousness beneath it, "Because now it's her face, isn't it?! This poor little fool who isn't even long for the mortal coil. Everything's just turning out nothing like how I pictured."

Lily swallowed, felt the saliva scrape down her throat, but she kept her voice calm and sharp as she asked, "What is this?"

"This," Ginny said with a laugh, clearly knowing all too well what Lily was referring to, "This, Lily, is the curse you left me with over fifty years ago. An unending obsession and worship that I simply cannot purge from myself. No, that I have absolutely no desire to purge from myself. You were… the only true thing I had inside of that place, even more than Voldemort, there was always you. And after all that you have the indecency to go and be twelve."

"I have the…"

"Yes, Lily," she insisted, interjecting before Lily could even finish her sentence, voice now impossibly loud and imposing, "You, who have inconceivable power over time and space, perhaps even over death itself, have the gall, after I spend fifty years trapped in a castle made of illusions and memory, to be twelve!"

Lily wanted to take a step back, suddenly seeing far more than this little school girl, seeing instead the strange warped shadow of Wizard Lenin stretching over her, but Lily held her ground and said, "I am not the one with gall and I am not the one who made you a pedophile."

"A pedophile," Ginny repeated, laughing again, almost in hysterics, "Is that what I am now?"

Ginny sighed then, shook her head and crossed her arms, looking over towards the shrine, "Stranger than you dreamt it, isn't it? Can you even dare to look or bare to think of me, this thing I have turned myself into, who even now yearns for all the things he can't have. You, as always, above else…"

She stepped forward then, and in her dark eyes she could almost see the pale blue shining out again, "But, Lily, fear can turn to love. You'll learn to see, to find the man behind all of this, behind the memory that isn't even a memory. Lily, I…"

She trailed off, stopped herself and at once looked away from Lily and back towards the shrine. And at once, despite herself, Lily felt her hand loosening on the hilt of the sword in something that was almost pity. She didn't reach out to touch Ginny's shoulder, not even as she stared despondently at the shrine, but watched with softer eyes all the same as Ginny trembled then slowly but surely collected herself.

And just like that Ginny was turning back to her, dark eyes determined and burning, all trace of sentimentality gone, "We should return, some fool up there, I'm sure, will be missing you."


	9. Notes and Prima Donna

Lily didn't know if it was because she missed so many classes as it was, she had been kidnapped last year and it was now no longer in vogue, or if the general Hogwarts population just no longer gave a shit what she did but her reappearance from the chamber of secrets was met with little to no fanfare.

Of course, Lily thought as she snuck into Defense with the rest of the second-year herd, she supposed she could make it seem like she was there the whole time by time travelling. Of course, that would notify Ginny the Lenin that Lily somehow had the ability to be in two places at once which seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea. Except, with time travel, it never seemed like there was much of a choice, you just sort of found out that you had time traveled and then had to go along with it so if future-Lily had decided to go for it then present-Lily was in something of a bind.

However, there was no flash of red in the mob of grumbling students, no sign of a prior Lily and when Hermione glared over at Lily it seemed all but confirmed that Lily really had taken a leave of absence, "Where've you been?"

"You know," Lily said slowly, still in something of a daze, "I honestly have no idea."

She was still trying to figure it out. So, she'd written her name in the paper, then went on one hell of a trip, woken up presumably hours later in the chamber of secrets where things got… somehow weirder and then Lily had been deposited back into the dungeon's bathroom while Ginny walked off towards her Transfiguration class informing Lily matter-of-factly that she had ten minutes to get to Defense.

Lily was a connoisseur of the surreal, but this… This had to be some sort of record even for her.

"You don't know?"

"I think Ron's sister might be a lesbian?" Lily asked, and even Ginny she didn't know how to describe, because by that point things had been so weird already that Ginny being not Ginny at all and having some secret wedding shrine to Lily was just…

She didn't even know!

Hermione's brow furrowed, her face pinched in disdain, and then appeared to decide she didn't want to know about Lily's dangerous liaisons with underclassmen. Probably for the best, Lily wished she hadn't been there either.

Still, at least it was over, and everything was back to a nice and normal (well normal for Hogwarts) sort of day and Lily could relax and…

"Gilderoy Lockhart does not give into blackmail or this constant slander!"

The herd stopped, there, on one of the walls of the auditorium, was a series of notes from the heir of Slytherin that had all presumably been sent to Lockhart. They were attached together by red strings, words circled violently here and there as if in search of some code, and Lockhart was standing in front of them, shuddering and breathing heavily, and daring one of them to contradict him.

And Lily was dearly tempted to walk right back out the door.

Lockhart then, awkwardly and with far too much force and tension to be genuine, smiled and laughed, "Oh, children, one of you is just a delightful prankster… Heir of Slytherin, yes, a real joke. One taken a little too far this time, just a little too far, but…"

"Professor?" Padme asked, eyes wide and looking more than a little alarmed as she clutched her books to her chest.

"It's nothing," Lockhart said, a little too quickly, "One of your little friends is just playing a very dangerous game… You want to hear what they said?"

Lily did not want to hear what the heir of Slytherin had to say but she suspected that Lockhart wasn't going to give them much of a choice. He was in the zone, as it were, already strutting about with the slightest of edges as if this could somehow make him as dangerous and intimidating as Wizard Lenin.

"They call me a fraud," he said, throwing his arms out wide at his side, as if he couldn't possibly believe anyone could call him that, "The heir of Slytherin, has the gall, to say that I've gone and not just made up, but stolen credit, for every single one of my heroic deeds."

He let out a harsh, almost desperate, laugh, "Can you believe that?"

Lily glanced at her peers who were all, also, glancing at each other. Finally, it was Zabini who asked, "Professor, are we… going to have class today?"

"Damn you, you little viper, at least I have the courage to use my own name!" Gilderoy said, hand slamming on the wall and voice hoarse. Then, once again, he seemed to remember that he was on the metaphorical stage before his unimpressed students and smiled, attempted to regain a casual friendly demeanor, "Class, yes, of course we will be having class again. Except… Draco?"

Draco, with a look of apprehension, looked up.

"Draco, yes," Gilderoy said motioning him over and when Draco refused to move walked forward and slung an arm around his bony shoulders, "You see, it's not in my nature to give into threats, especially entirely ludicrous ones like this. And, among a number of quite ridiculous things like an empty box for the performance, our dear Hermione cast as anything other than a reindeer, he's quite insistent that Eleanor Lily Potter take the titular role, namely, my role, and Draco, we can't let that happen."

Draco now looked entirely too alarmed and opened his mouth to protest vehemently, "I have written my…"

"Yes, yes, you've written your father, I know. You've made that… quite, clear, Draco," judging by Lockhart's expression he was about as fond of hearing about Draco's illustrious father as Lily herself was, "But Draco, think of the prestige."

Draco gawked, "The prestige?!"

"Not just anyone can play the part of Gilderoy Lockhart," Lockhart said, "And Draco, my dear boy, you have what it takes."

Draco did not have what it took, and he seemed to know it, however with Lockhart looking in his eyes a flicker of doubt appeared as well as a yearning for something of his own. Everything Draco had, everything he was, was secretly his father's and some part of Draco must be desperately aware of it. He was on the quidditch team because of his father, he had money because of his father, he had friends because of his father, even his threats pertained to his father.

There wasn't a word in his mouth or idea in his head that Lucius Malfoy hadn't put there.

Gilderoy Lockhart, however, did not belong to Lucius Malfoy, and Draco knew it.

He winced though, about to protest, but then Lockhart put out another bit of damning evidence, "And surely, someone who calls himself the heir of Slytherin, will have no choice but to support you over someone like Ellie Potter. That or he's not just a coward but a fraud as well!"

Given that Draco Malfoy had swallowed propaganda regarding Wizard Lenin and his revolution, the glory of Slytherin and the dark arts, his whole life that was the remark that sealed his fate, and in turn, Lily's as well.

"Yes," Gilderoy Lockhart said, suddenly animated and clapping his hands together, darting up onto the stage, "Far too many notes for my taste, and most of them about Miss Potter, it's time for a little more diversity from our little prankster!"

It was by chance, then, that Lily looked up to where, fluttering down from the ceiling as usual, was a single white envelope addressed to Lockhart, holding it towards him, she said dully, "You have another note."

Lockhart stopped, paled, and gave Lily a rather funny calculating look, as if wondering if it was Lily herself who was putting these notes forward. He made no move to take it from her, instead kept smiling, his smile far too wide and too white.

"You read it, Ellie," he said through gritted teeth, in that manner one used when trying to sound pleasant but feeling anything but.

Lily slowly, carefully, took out the letter from the envelope and began to read the oddly familiar elegant cursive, "Professor Lockhart, I have now sent you several notes of the most amiable nature detailing how my theater is to be run. You have not followed my instructions, I shall give you one last chance…"

And it was strange, but Lily's eyes drifting towards the ceiling, she could almost hear that otherworldly younger counterpart of Wizard Lenin's voice drifting down to them, like small flakes of snow.

"There is no other Gilderoy Lockhart than Eleanor Lily Potter, not even you, Mr. Lockhart can so well match the titular role you've so flagrantly written. Certainly, we are all fully aware that it is not a role that one such as Draco Malfoy, who has never fought for anything in his life, can live up to.

Should this be ignored, Gilderoy, a disaster beyond your imagine will occur.

I remain, sir, your obedient servant, the heir of Slytherin."

Lily put the note back into the envelope, held it out to Lockhart who was staring at her open-mouthed, as too, was the rest of the room. Suddenly, Lily thought, it seemed more than clear that Lily herself was, in this particular drama, cast in the role of the heir.

Lily, coughing awkwardly with her face flushing, and stepping forward to place the letter in Lockhart hand said, "I… I think Draco will make a fine Gilderoy Lockhart."

And just like that, Lily was back to being love interest number three.


	10. Poor Fool, He Makes Me Laugh

She hadn't realized the lights on the stage would be so alarmingly bright. Even offstage, waiting in the wings as Draco Malfoy slaughtered great mythical beasts with a panache and valor that was to be admired by all, Lily was very nearly blinded by it.

Her eyes roamed the audience searching the dark mass for one face in particular.

She'd tried to convince Wizard Lenin to come. He certainly hadn't wanted to, had certainly avoided showing any interest, but it'd seemed import to Lily that he come and witness whatever this ended up being.

If he was here, she thought, he was probably regretting it. Draco Malfoy was not doing well, had continued in fact to flop during rehearsals all while Lockhart received more and more threatening notes promising vague but ominous revenge. Right now, watching him on stage, it felt a bit like having your teeth pulled out of your head one by one.

Still, one thing that was perhaps good or bad, the voice, Ginny, the Wizard Lenin that wasn't Wizard Lenin had disappeared from whence he came. Lily hadn't seen or heard from it since the chamber, and for all she could tell, it was almost like he'd never existed in the first place.

So, weeks went by and Lily was left to wonder if she'd just made it all up somehow. Life proceeded as normal, well, more normal than even the year before as, around this time Rabbit had been introduced, Squirrel had been on the mend, and there had already been a troll in the dungeons.

She was left in this surreal floating haze as if waiting for the other shoe, unseen, to drop.

"Ellie," Gilderoy hissed out of nowhere in her ear, "That's your cue, get on up there!"

Lily jolted, but there was Draco, awkwardly looking straight towards her in sheer panic while Lily, straightening, prepared herself to get into the zone. She spared a glance for the audience, a look out of the corner of her eyes, and she thought she might have made out Wizard Lenin's shadow somewhere behind the pillars, barely noticeable.

Right, now, where was she, right this was the triumph moment where she was supposed to run into Draco's arms in delight, relief, and joy for her humble village being saved and then have the dramatic and grief inducing departure where he leaves her behind without a second glance.

Unfortunately, Draco Malfoy, as always, did not look prepared for that. Especially not prepared to break into his umpteenth love ballad of the night.

However, when he opened his mouth, it wasn't his words that came out.

"Did I not instruct that the role of Lockhart was to be played by Ellie Potter?" it resounded through the stage, loud and seeming to come from every possible direction, and at the familiarity Lily shuddered because there was the sound of the voice from a dream that wasn't a dream.

She saw half the audience, previously sleeping, startle to attention, a gleam of interest in their eyes as they realized that for once something interesting might be happening. However, out of the corner of Lily's eye, a shadow twisted.

Draco opened his mouth again, but no words came out, his voice inexplicably gone. He sent a desperate look towards Lily who in turn could only stare. From the wings, Lockhart, biting his lip and squeezing his eyes closed, waved his wand and cast a spell. Draco then doubled over and began to endlessly vomit slugs.

Lily stepped back as the audience screamed, watching as they oozed out of his lips and onto the floor, while Draco proceeded to get greener and greener. Up in the rafters, the voice was now in hysterics, as if he had managed to surpass his own expectations.

Awkwardly, in the audience, some of the first-year students began to clap, looking around at each other and clearly unsure if the play was still happening or not and this was the appearance of some new dread villain.

Abruptly Lockhart darted out, all but throwing slug vomiting Draco Malfoy backstage, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, due to some… technical difficulties I am afraid that we must take a ten-minute intermission. However, when we return the role of Gilderoy Lockhart will be played by… Miss Eleanor Lily Potter. In the meantime, we shall once again be giving you the ballet of the sugarplum reindeer from act one."

Lockhart then stepped off the stage, leaving the musicians hired for the pit orchestra to panic and flip pages backwards until they landed upon the aforementioned ballet (which was all too bad for Hermione as she now had to live through that catastrophe twice) while Lockhart pulled Lily off stage to stand by Draco, who was still vomiting slugs.

"Oh, Draco can't you stop that?" Draco just gave Lockhart a pitiful, and somewhat accusing, look. However, any threats regarding his father were stopped by the piles and piles of slugs crawling out of his intestines.

"Right," Lockhart said, and then pinned his gaze on Lily, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking deep into her very soul, "Now, Ellie, you are a girl and we can't help that. However, you are the only choice I have so by Merlin do not fail me! Go out there and be glorious!"

Lily was about to respond to this but that was when the shriek occurred. Lily looked towards the stage and saw, instead of the ballet, the actors paused in horror, as there, twitching from a noose with her eyes rolled back into her head was a hanging Ginny Weasley.

Lily felt as if someone was moving her feet for her, propelling her out onto the stage and then off of it, deep into the audience even as students started fleeing and staff members hurtled their way onto it, cutting Ginny's corpse down from the rafters (and somehow Lily was sure she was already dead, had been dead longer than anyone had ever suspected, and that perhaps Ginny Weasley had never been at the wheel).

Without any idea of where she was headed she found herself in the shadow where Wizard Lenin was watching the stage with wide, alarmed eyes, barely blinking as Lily took his hand and sprinted them out of there, "We need to leave, now, we have to get out of here."

Because all she could see was Ginny's face, Ginny's face in the chamber of secrets, worn as someone else's temporary mask.


	11. Why Have You Brought Me Here?

She took the stairs two at a time, up and up, and as far away from the chamber of the secrets as one could get. Wizard Lenin, crippled as he was, could barely keep up.

"Lily, Lily, where are we going?" he asked, an edge of distress to his voice but not nearly enough for the circumstance.

"We're not going back there," Lily said, not even looking at him, just heading all the way up, up and out of the castle where he, it, wouldn't even think to follow.

"Oh, we're going back," cue frustration and annoyance, "That little Weasley girl just hung herself from the rafters and you bloody well know there's going to be an investigation."

"The investigation doesn't matter if I'm dead!" Lily snapped, a haunting image of the chamber, of a basilisk, and a wedding dress pounding in her skull.

"Dead?" he asked, tugging back on her hand, "Now how in the world would you end up…"

"Then as close to death as I am capable of being!" Lily said, "And he'll do it, I believe it, if he has to kill ten thousand Ginny Weasleys and open ten thousand chambers of secrets the heir of Slytherin will do it."

"The heir?" Wizard Lenin balked, pushing himself forward so that he was stumbling beside her and could look her in the eye, "Lily, I'm the heir of Slytherin, there isn't anyone…"

"Then he's been using your name and your chamber and your face, hasn't he?!"

That got him to pause, his expression almost stunned, as if he had just been shot and couldn't quite feel it yet, "What are you talking about?"

But Lily didn't know, not really, not truly, it had… It had all spiraled out of control without her looking, with her barely recognizing it, until it seemed as if she was in an endless labyrinth where left turns didn't exist and all you could do was keep going and going while a specter that wore a face far too familiar watched.

Finally, they reached the top stair case and with profound effort Lily flung both herself and Wizard Lenin onto the roof so that they could overlook the lake and the sea beyond it, all glittering in the twilight.

And it looked so like that kingdom of paper and ink…

"Lily?"

Lily stared out at the lake, sat down on the roof and felt the wind blow through her hair, "Lenin, I've been there, to his world of unending night. To the world where he mimics daylight with electric lights and a thousand candelabras."

Then, looking over at Wizard Lenin, her eyes widened, and she said, "And I've seen him, Lenin, and it would have been better if he was hideous or simply plain or anyone else at all. But he wore your face, and it suited him so well."

Wizard Lenin for a moment shared her fear, but it faded into something dismissive and a touch amused, "My face? No, it can't have been mine. The original wouldn't have the power for that, not without the stone or a massive ritual…"

But Lily wasn't thinking about Lenin and the world she lived in, apparently so very separate from her own, and she said instead, "Except they weren't your eyes, not really, the same color and texture but they were filled with a grief and hopelessness, and faith, an overwhelming amount of faith in something you've never…"

She didn't know how to finish that sentence, not truly, could only stare out at the lake and remember this one strange adventure Wizard Lenin hadn't shared with her.


	12. All I Ask of You

Then a hand, in front of her vision, and she turned to see Wizard Lenin smiling at her in a way he did so rarely. Something fond, warm, familiar, and tender, "Lily, take my hand."

She did, and he pulled her up so that they were both standing somewhat unsteadily on the roof, he pulled her closer though so that she was pressed into his dark jacket, "What have you gotten yourself involved in this time?"

She laughed, the sound wretched and relieved all at once, "I have absolutely no idea."

"Well, all the same, you forget that I'm still here," he said, his hands tightening and curling into her hair, "Even locked in your basement, outside of your head, I'm here. No amount of corpses hanging from the ceiling will ever change that."

She pulled back so she could look him in the eye, could see how his smile reached his eyes, "Haven't we always been together, Lily? Through more than this, even?"

"And Hogwarts isn't forever," Lily said, her own smile growing far past the bounds of any normal smile, "Even when its filled with corpses."

"Especially when its filled with corpses," Lenin muttered, "The board will try to shut the bloody place down or at least throw out Dumbledore, though, that isn't such a bad consequence I think. Though it does give him an unfortunate amount of time on his hands."

Lily laughed, because of course he would say that, and if he could say that then perhaps it wasn't so bad as it seemed. Perhaps there was light, true light, inside of the world rather than an illusion of memory and dreams.

"Lenin, when you leave Hogwarts, say that you'll take me with you," Lily said, stepping back and taking his hands into hers, "That's all I ask, really, just…"

"I think, Lily, after all this, I could do nothing less," he said, smile turning a bit wry, as if this was a joke of some kind but none the less true for it. As if he hadn't made it seem like she should stay behind while he forged ahead, that this, truly, was not the end it had seemed so recently.

That perhaps he had never really expected her to rot inside Hogwarts in the first place.

Lily flung herself forward with a great laugh, squeezing him perhaps a bit too tightly as he awkwardly patted the back of her head, "Yes, I'm excited too, and I'm sure when the rest of Britain figures it out they'll be positively thrilled. Though, I will say, that it's in my best interest if you linger in this place, but god knows I can't make you."

Lily just laughed but said nothing, finally after perhaps too long she pulled back and grabbed his hand once again, pulled him towards the edge of the roof, "We should get back down there, shouldn't we? We have a murder and or suicide to investigate after all with another you at the head."

"Another me is a gross exaggeration given that there's only two options," Wizard Lenin scoffed, "And one of them is a bodyless wraith and the other's stuck in a diary in Lucius Malfoy's library."

"You think I'm lying?" Lily asked, though more amused than indignant, she just had the feeling Wizard Lenin would be embarrassed by the idea that his other half cared so much about amateur productions.

Wizard Lenin considered this for a moment, appearing to think on it, then dismissed it entirely, "I think you hit your head at some point or else were fed a rather interesting potion by someone."

Well, Lily thought on that, and decided she wouldn't put that past Ginny Weasley from the little she'd met of her. Well, if that hadn't just been the other Wizard Lenin, Wizard Trotsky's she supposed, glorified sock puppet.

Still, she couldn't help but point out, "I don't know, Lenin, of the two years I've been at Hogwarts so far you do seem to be at the bottom of every conspiracy."

"No, only one of those years, and that we can blame on Dumbledore bringing the stone into…" Wizard Lenin trailed off as he realized that he was now about to step onto thin air, "Wait, are we walking off the roof?! Why the hell are we walking off the roof?!"

But it was too late, Lily already jumped off and pulled him with her, with them floating down, walking downwards on an invisible and intangible staircase made of air and twilight with Wizard Lenin cursing all the way down.


	13. Entr'acte

There was a rather short-lived investigation into the death of Ginny Weasley and into the mysterious heir of Slytherin.

"Fifty years ago," Wizard Lenin summarized to Lily in the darkened room beneath the Default common room as he lit several candles, though whether for light or simply the effect was anyone's guess, "Almost to the very date, I was sixteen years old and opened the chamber of secrets, setting loose a basilisk on my terrified classmates. On the wall, I wrote in the blood of roosters, that the chamber had been opened and that enemies of the heir were to beware."

Wizard Lenin's eyes met hers for a moment, the light flickering in them and giving them an odd unearthly glow that would not have been out of place in the kingdom of ink and paper, "A few were petrified, one, a muggleborn girl by the name of Myrtle Warren, died and they nearly shut down the school. Fortunately for me and for Hogwarts, around the same time Hagrid had been raising an acromantula illegally on the school grounds. I turned him into Dippet and he, in turn, was blamed for the events and was expelled from the school and had his wand snapped while I shut the chamber."

Hagrid, within days, despite Dumbledore's vehement protesting, was arrested on the orders of the board of directors and taken to a holding cell in London for interrogation. Ginny, in turn, had a funeral which Lily attended, sitting somewhere in the middle behind the Weasley clan, staring at the coffin and wondering if she had ever seen even a hint of Ginny's true persona.

"That was the last, aside from Lord Voldemort, the world has heard of any heir of Slytherin," Wizard Lenin finished, looking across at Lily with an oddly somber expression, perhaps a slightly accusing one as Lily had never told him anything about an heir of Slytheirn and that if she had he might have approached it very differently.

"He's undoubtedly back for the stone," Wizard Lenin finally concluded, "I don't know why he felt the need to murder Ginny Weasley, perhaps she was unlucky enough to stumble onto the truth, perhaps he's hiding in the skin of one of her brothers, but he's here and he will be coming if he hasn't made contact already."

"Oh, too late for that," Lily said, and Wizard Lenin's head whipped towards her.

"Lily, what did you do?"

"Well, remember that patron saint…" Lily said, wincing ever so slightly and wondering is he should have seen this in retrospect, "Well, it's you, or, well, him, I've decided to call him Trotsky."

"You've decided to call him Trotsky?" Wizard Lenin repeated unbelievably drily, like he could hardly contain his disdain for that idea.

"I don't think he's the original though, or, not the one I met unless he went and hit his head on something. He… didn't act like that at all, and we met face to face, and he didn't even seem to realize the philosopher's stone had ever been here. In fact…" Lily trailed off, now entirely uncertain how to put the rest of it.

"In fact?"

"He may want to… marry me?" Lily finally said, and at Wizard Lenin's utter disbelief she added, "You know, in a few years, probably, he'd like to do it in a few years, but he may get impatient. He didn't seem like he was in a particularly good place."

In fact, looking back, half of the surreal atmosphere had been his ridiculous emotional whiplash as well as his over the top declarations of love and devotion. Well, that, and all the pretty lights and gondola rides.

Wizard Lenin rubbed at his temples and shook his head, as if he had no idea what to do with her, "Lily, there is no other one, the only other Tom Riddle lurking about is currently stuffed in an unfortunate diary and has rotted there for fifty years spending the last decade on a shelf in Lucius Malfoy's library who would never be so stupid as to unleash that in his son's school."

"Well…" Lily trailed off, again, not sure how to put any of her strange encounter with the younger Tom Riddle in the world of the paper or her encounter with Ginny Weasley afterwards.

"Honestly, it's as if you cease to function without adult supervision entirely," Wizard Lenin said with a roll of his eyes and Lily was about to retort to that but then she'd had the idea, the terrible awful idea, that unfortunately neither of them could top.

So, by the next morning, a week and a day after Ginny's funeral, Lily introduced Default to Lenin Rabbitson, Lepur Rabbitson's equally Albanian half-brother much to Hermione's skepticism then complete and utter apathy and mild irritation that Lenin Rabbitson had missed being in Lockhart's play and joining her as a comically relieving reindeer.


	14. Masquerade and Why So Silent?

"Ellie, why are all these losers at our table?"

Lily had absolutely no idea except that maybe Lenin Rabbitson had been a bad idea. She hadn't counted on Wizard Lenin's brooding adolescent charm combined with his tragic backstory. Suddenly, Default was the most popular table in the whole school and consistently surrounded by adolescent girls of all shapes and sizes, including the now dearly devoted Pansy Parkinson who had bestowed upon Wizard Lenin the lovely name of Lenny-poo.

Lenny-poo, for his own part, looked very close to lighting everything on fire.

Weeks in and there was no sign yet of Wizard Lenin's other mysterious half, just like before the play he'd gone and disappeared into thin air somewhere, like maybe he really had been Ginny the whole time.

So instead of actually getting things done, Wizard Lenin had been sucked into the inertia of Hogwarts, trapped in the surreal monotony along with Lily. Though, Lily supposed, it was nice that he was at least suffering with her.

Still, there was something even more surreal about how normal it all was, she thought. Like she could imagine him hiding somewhere out in this mob, as some other unfortunate Ginny Weasley, wearing yet another paper face in the unwitting masquerade.

"Seriously, Ellie, do something," Blaise insisted, nodding his head towards the swooning crowd all trying to shove their gifts onto the unfortunate Wizard Lenin.

"Not my problem," Lily said after a slight pause, wondering why everyone insisted on making her clean up everyone's mess. Especially, since she had decided, that Wizard Lenin's adolescent girl troubles were definitively not her problem.

Soon though, she thought, she and Wizard Lenin would be out of this place and she didn't care if Wizard Lenin thought it was disadvantageous or bought Dumbledore too much ammunition she was gone. Just like that, and there would even be an Eleanor Lily Potter anymore, she would finally be free…

"Lily," a voice said from behind her, voice curling about the words almost like a caress, and Lily turned, and frowned as she spotted Pansy Parkinson eerily smiling, looking directly at Lily rather than her beloved Lenny-poo. In fact, Lily thought as she straightened, Pansy Parkinson wasn't acting like Pansy Parkinson at all, was not even putting on a charade of Pansy Parkinson.

And just like that, Lily was sitting in the quidditch bleachers again, and travelling down and down and down into the forgotten chamber beneath the castle.

"Now, now, Lily, don't give me that face, I told you she was temporary," Pansy said chidingly, and there wasn't a doubt in Lily's mind that he, Wizard Trotsky behind the mask, meant Ginny Weasley.

Ginny Weasley now dead and buried in the ground, for the crime of having been seen.

"You…" Lily started and at her words the other Default members began to look at Pansy, but the thing wearing Pansy's face didn't seem to care in the slightest, no, in fact, Wizard Trotsky seemed delighted by the attention as if he wouldn't ask for anything less.

"I know, a bit gauche for the occasion, gaudier than Ginevra, certainly," Pansy said, frowning down at herself in dissatisfaction, "But beggars can't be choosers, and she made it so very easy."

Pansy then turned on her heel, nodded once towards Lenin with a cruel smile, then made her way to the front of the great hall and the staff table. The hall, with each deliberate step, grew quieter until her footsteps were as loud as drums, and, finally, as Pansy reached the staff table she lingered in front of Lockhart.

"Why so silent, good messieurs? Did you think that I had left you for good?" Pansy asked, a cruel edge to her lips, and then with her a wand a bundle of papers appearing out of nowhere which she slammed down on the table before the shaking Lockhart, "Have you missed me, good messieurs? I have written you an opera!"

Slamming Pansy's hand onto the score of the opera he leaned forward, leering down at Lockhart with Pansy's face, ignoring the wands now trained on her body, "I so enjoyed your last musical endeavor, you see, that I could not help but write one of my own. Here I bring the finished score, Total Recall Triumphant!"

Pansy stepped back from Lockhart with a truly unnerving smile, putting her wand away, "I advise you to comply, my instructions should be clear," Pansy's eyes moved to Ginny's brothers, all sitting stock still at the Gryffindor table as Pansy waived down at them, "Remember, that there are always Ginevera Weasleys to be found."

Pansy's eyes then drifted to Lily's, met hers across the sea of people, "And remember, Lily, your chains will always be mine."

Pansy collapsed forward, twitching on the floor as the spell, whatever it was that had kept them all shocked and immobile, lifted and Dumbledore and the staff dashed forward to cart her off to the hospital wing.

While Lily, with wide eyes and drums pounding inside of her head, could only see that small piece of paper and that single, stark, instruction in black ink, "Write."


	15. Notes and Twisted Every Way

Perhaps naturally, Lily found herself in Dumbledore's office for what was supposed to be a questioning but seemed to have turned into an interrogation. Wizard Lenin, Lenin Rabbitson that is, had not been brought along (had in fact actively been thrown out of this meeting as he'd tried to force his way in with her) so it was just Lily.

Eleanor Lily Potter, McGonagall, Snape, Lockhart, and Albus Dumbledore himself huddled over the latest and greatest notes that Wizard Trotsky had left for their enjoyment.

And all they were doing was screaming at each other.

McGonagall paced, curiously indignant on Lily's behalf as she cried out, "Albus, you can't seriously expect her to…"

Dumbledore merely sat in his chair, looking at McGonagall with a somber expression, not even sparing a glance for Lily herself, "If, this is Tom Riddle, as I believe it must be, then Miss Potter may very well be our only…"

Severus Snape said nothing at all, did not even look at her, merely glared at the wall.

"She is a child! You can't just use her as bait!"

"Not to mention that she's, well, just not that great of an actor all things considered," Lockhart added in much to Lily's slightest of glares, as Lockhart, still twitchy after months of blackmail, had decided to take it out on her since Wizard Trotsky was insistent that Lily get every and any lead role.

Lockhart continued, giving Lily a rather significant look, "In fact, all things considered, are we sure that Ellie didn't, well, you know…"

"Are you suggesting, Professor, that I have been blackmailing you for months, possessing other students, just so that I could obtain the lead role in your unbelievably shitty musical?" Lily asked, her voice cold and flat enough that it stopped Lockhart in his tracks just as easily as Wizard Trotsky himself in the body of Pansy Parkinson had.

"Oh, Miss Potter, surely you don't…"

"Regardless, I'm not doing it," Lily said, and that got their attention, they each stared at her, "I'm not a part of this plot, this isn't my role, not even a duty you can assign Eleanor Lily Potter like you people do everything else!"

She would not be entering that labyrinth again, not for these people, not for Hogwarts. She felt like… If she did again, if she so easily went again, something integral to her would be lost forever.

"My dear girl," Dumbledore said, and how dare he say that to her after everything, after Quirrell but he said it all the same, "I'm afraid that if you do not… For whatever reason, and I can't say why that is, but he has chosen you for his weakness."

Carefully, Dumbledore picked up the latest note, cleared his throat, and reread the words that he had read when Lily had been summoned, "Fondest greetings to you all, a few instructions just before rehearsal starts. Draco Malfoy must be taught to act, not his normal trick of strutting round the stage. And my director must learn, that his place is an office, not the arts."

And again, Lily could so easily imagine his voice as it was read, not Dumbledore's but that voice from the piece of paper whispering in her year. She cringed as she listened to what came next, the direct words to her.

"As for Miss Eleanor Lily Potter, no doubt she'll do her best. It's true she's good, she knows, though should she wish to excel she has much still to learn. If pride will let her return to me…Your obedient friend and angel."

Dumbledore looked up at her, something dark and significant and damning in his blue eyes, "You see, my dear, he has left us quite the opening with your name on it."

Yes, he had, or the appearance of one certainly. And yet, Lily thought, Dumbledore seemed so very eager to put her in that very dangerous position. She wondered how concerned he really was for her wellbeing, that if something unfortunate were to happen to Eleanor Lily Potter if it would not simply be written off as her destiny to confront Tom Marvolo Riddle face to face in front of a live studio audience. Perhaps, she thought, it might even prove to be rather convenient for him.

And this wasn't like last time with the stone.

This one, she thought, wanted anything but a philosopher's stone.

"You have no idea what he is," Lily warned, but Dumbledore didn't seem to hear her, or did but thought himself so knowledgeable that he could so easily dismiss her. As if he knew every incarnation of Tom Marvolo Riddle better than they knew themselves.

"You have no idea what he's capable of," Lily continued, practically spitting the words, and could taste the truth of the words even as she spoke them, "If you make me do this… If I lose this you will never see me again, no one will ever see me again. I will become nothing more than a memory, his puppet and illusion…"

And yet…

Could she choose not to? Was it that simple? Even Lily, she felt, could not escape the overwhelming destiny of Eleanor Lily Potter. It had already brought her back to Hogwarts once, hadn't it? And could she really leave them all now, the Hermione Grangers, Neville Longbottoms, and Luna Lovegoods of the castle?

And there was something admirable, she thought, in living up to that terrible burden. Even Wizard Trotsky had noted it, that Lily shone so brightly because a part of her was the Gilderoy Lockhart that even Lockhart aspired to be.

You could not simply say no to something like that, not even when staring into the face of catastrophe. Perhaps, she thought wryly, she was something of an illusion already.

Lily stood, made her way to the door even as they called after her, Dumbledore she was sure was smiling at her back as she marched to her own damnation, "Very well then, I'll take the part, and it is to be war then, but this time… This time the disaster will be his!"


	16. Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Stepping out of the office, then down the spiral stairs one by one she felt again that haze descend over her, her feet never faltering as they marched her towards her destiny and all she could see was his face in every iteration as well as her own.

Forever and always cast into roles she only barely knew how to play.

She still walked even as the gargoyles closed the doors behind her, walked and walked until she was walking outside of the castle and her feet hit the edge of the lake. There, she stared out into the mist, and as she stared out and listened she wondered if she could hear her own funeral bells ringing.

Lily thought of everything and nothing.

She thought of destiny, of herself, of Wizard Lenin, Wizard Trotsky, Tom Marvolo Riddle, and the prisoner's dilemma that neither of them could escape from.

The infinite game, the illusions, and the degradation of the only soul in the mortal world that knew her name and wasn't afraid to say it out loud.

And she wondered, to herself, if he had always wanted it to come to this. For Lily to take the role as both the sacrificial maiden and the golden prince in the production of his own making. How long had he been writing this play with her in mind? Somehow, she thought it was long before Lockhart had ever picked up his own quill.

She could imagine him, hunched over a desk in his own mind, in his paper kingdom, building plays within plays with her face infinitely stretching into each. As if he had placed her in a room of mirrors, so that when one looked left or right they could see Lily growing smaller and smaller as she stretched into infinity.

She could picture his face when he wrote it, how his eyes would burn like stars, and his hand would practically fly across the page. For a strange, surreal, moment she wondered if under different circumstances they could have been friends, this Wizard Trotsky and her.

After all, he shared the face, the very soul, of her only true companion in this world. Yet, at the same time, she was certain that he was just waiting for her to destroy him. That, if anyone had the right to destroy him, it should only be Eleanor Lily Potter.

No, not her, but Lily. It could only ever be Lily who was the lead in this strange play of his. And she could respect that, even if she couldn't understand it, she could and would respect it and see it through to the very end.

She could do no less for any iteration of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Whatever damnation that end might lead her to.


	17. The Point of No Return

Dumbledore, she thought, was either playing a very subtle game or really was aiming for Lily to be killed like lamb to slaughter. There were no aurors, no guards of any kind, just a few prefects at the doors to the theater and staff members seated in the audience.

As if it could possibly be that easy.

The audience, as it was, was looking more than a little disturbed. Lily hardly blamed them, it was a goddamn disturbing play.

Whatever madness Wizard Trotsky courted inside of his paper worlds had leaked into this play of his, the set of jagged glass stained windows, half-lit stages with overarching shadows, and the story one that a wizard should have no familiarity with.

That of mutants, Mars, the truth and choice of self, and the malleability of memory.

And Lily, herself, an oddly female Doug Quaid, now standing across in a Martian hotel room from a man who did not belong in this world whatsoever, who, in song, warned her of last chances and plunging down rabbit holes.

Her feet were bare, her makeup giving her a rugged haggard look, and she stared across dubiously at Draco Malfoy sitting in the chair. The spotlight fell on him, a bleeding, strange, red like the eye of a dragon. And in it, as he sat still and analyzed her, legs crossed in a muggle suit, he looked nothing like himself.

In fact, he looked as if he was a poor man's puppet, and there was something blue hiding behind his gray eyes as he smiled at her. When he opened his mouth, though they were the lines Draco Malfoy had memorized, they were not his words that came out, "You have come here, in pursuit of your deepest urge, in pursuit of that wish which 'til now has been silent."

He stood, gestured out a hand towards her, in offering as she took a step back, eyes darting towards the crowd to see if any one of them could see Draco for the cheap mask he now was. After all, there was none of Draco Malfoy's so very human awkwardness in this performance.

"I have brought you, that our passions may fuse and merge. In your mind you've already succumbed to me, dropped all defenses, completely succumbed to me… Now you are here with me, no second thoughts, you've decided…"

For the temptation of self and memory, for the seduction of a truth only he could give, with words that didn't quite fit the story he had told himself he wished to tell the world.

He trailed off, stepped past her, towards the audience amassed before him, "Past the point of no return, no backward glances. The games we've played 'til now are at an end."

Then, turning back towards her with a hand held out towards her, "Past all thought of if or when, no use resisting. Abandon thought and let the dream descend!"

As per the script, Lily took it in hers, though her eyes were not in the script and they burned so very brightly. Not the eyes of a lost Quaid, or this strange iteration of him in Wizard Trotsky's mind, but the eyes of the prince who battles dragons.

He pulled her closer, Draco's hands wrapping around her shoulders even as his head rested in the curve of her neck, "What raging fire shall flood the soul? What rich desire unlocks its door? What sweet seduction lies before us."

"Past the point of no return, the final threshold. What warm unspoken secrets will we learn beyond the point of no return?"

And yet, she thought with her eyes closed, in Total Recall Doug Quaid does not take the pill, he does not rejoin the world of the living and the droids but chooses madness and uncertainty. So, who was Draco supposed to be, the spy who was feisty yet demure, or the injected program of the controller?

He did not seem to care though as he continued to hold her, past when he was supposed to, past when she was to move away and run off with the spy from the dream. Glancing at him, his eyes looked far away, filled with the spotlights and searching for something meaningful inside them.

The music changed, slowed, became something sweeter and foreign to this strange spectacle of a production he had put on. Draco backed away, turned Lily to face him so that she had to stare directly into his eyes, past them to wherever Wizard Trotsky rested beneath, "Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime."

In the spotlights, Lily thought, Draco's cheekbones looked sharper and almost starved, his body frail and sweating, as if something vital was pouring out of him now by the second as he stared at her.

Wizard Trotsky, playing his voice as one might play a fiddle, made it soft and sweet and pleading, "Lead me, save me from my solitude. Say you want me with you here beside you. Anywhere you go let me go too, Lily, that's all I ask of…"

And Lily, for this instant, knew many things. First, that no one had noticed, and no one would before it was far too late. Second, that Wizard Lenin was backstage and that too was far too late. Then, third, that Draco Malfoy was going to die but that she could choose how he ended and perhaps how she ended as well.

Lily conjured a knife into her hands, and before Wizard Trotsky could even think to finish the line she slammed it into Draco Malfoy's stomach. He spluttered, blood seeping through clothes and out of his lips and onto Lily, and the look he gave her.

It was something half betrayed, half amused, and half chiding.

"Oh Lily," he said, "You never had a chance, not for him, not for anyone like him."

He pointed Draco Malfoy's wand at a lever, unconcerned by the blood gushing out of him, and Lily and Draco Malfoy plunged down into Hogwarts, down, and down and down into the chamber of secrets itself.


	18. Down Once More

He pulled her through pipes, hand clutched to his ribs and blood seeping out of him at an alarming rate and spreading out in thick swirling clouds in the dark freezing water, "Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair. Down we plunge to the prison of my mind. Down that path into darkness deep as hell!"

He stopped, leaned against the pipes, laughing, "Draco Malfoy, really Lily, you stabbed me for Draco Malfoy? What did you think that would accomplish, exactly?"

He laughed again, looked at her, that betrayed and wrathful look appearing on his face again, "Did you think I'd disappear with him? I hate to tell you, Lily, but I grew wise to that trick. It's not just Draco Malfoy, and now you've taken the last vestiges of his resistance, his soul is mine for the taking and my own flesh and blood right around the corner."

He pushed forward, his hand on hers tighter, even as he pulled her further and further down, "The trouble is that I still forgive you, after all of this, after everything else you no doubt have planned I will always forgive you! Why is that? Why can I forgive you when I can't even forgive myself for the diary?! Why, Lily?!"

Lily should go, should trudge upstairs and leave Draco to it, go anywhere but down into the depths again. Except something in her wouldn't let her, was determined to see this out to the end, whatever that end might be.

Compelled only by the wretchedness of Wizard Trotsky's patchwork soul.

After too many turns and too many pipes they were in the chamber once more, still lit on all sides and it wasn't until the central chamber, that ominous walkway, that he came to a halt, "Help me, Lily, move Draco into the light."

He hardly waited for her, began to tip to the side until she caught him and, as he instructed moved her near a torch and propped him against the wall. His eyes fluttering closed, he breathed out a sigh and said, "Thank you."

"Draco won't survive," he said slowly, the words almost slurred, "And you stabbed him in front of a live studio audience. Why did you do that? Hogwarts will be forever closed to you, Lily."

"You cast me in your play," Lily finally said, "And better that than you hanging him from the rafters."

Draco barked out a laugh, his whole-body shuddering, "So, even in this, you are a martyr for these ungrateful people?"

A haze began to appear near Draco as his eyes fell closed, his lips growing blue and his breathing shallow, and the white haze slowly began to consolidate into Wizard Trotsky's form from the world of paper. He smiled at her far too fondly, as he said, "They do not deserve you, Lily."

Perhaps not, Lily thought, but then Wizard Trotsky might be the only person in the world to ever say that plainly. She wondered if she should tell him, or where they would go from here as Draco Malfoy withered away and he grew more solid by the minute.

Still, she couldn't help but remind him, "That doesn't mean I'll go with you, Trotsky."

He blinked at the name, tasted it on his lips, but seemed unphased by her remark, "Perhaps not, not like this but… But we are one actor short in our dramatic finale."

Lily stopped, paused, "One actor…"

He held up a transparent hand, walking towards the entrance to the chamber, a smile growing on his lips, "Yes, I think, my dear, we have a guest."

Into the chamber, Lily's wand drawn, hobbling inside in a body that had shook off the twelve-year-old residue of Lenin Rabbitson was Wizard Lenin dressed in black and in red with his expression closed off and eyes burning.

Wizard Trotsky, still only half tangible, clapped his hands together, "Sir, this is indeed, an unparalleled delight. I had rather hoped that you would come, and now, my wish comes true, you have truly made my night."

"You were expecting me?" Wizard Lenin asked, and Wizard Trotsky just grinned, as if well and truly delighted.

"Were you hiding it, Lenin?" he asked, "I wasn't simply expecting you, brother, I knew you would come."

He motioned to Lily then, still standing near Draco, "How could you not come, when I realized who you were, where you must have been hidden all these years! The unintended horcrux, the accident, and you were with her the whole time."

"She is not who you think she is," Wizard Lenin said, wand forward and steady and aimed at Draco Malfoy's head.

"Oh, go ahead and kill him," Wizard Trotsky said with a roll of his eyes, "I have many others, and you know what they say about cutting off the head of the hydra."

Wizard Trotsky then turned on his heel, leaving Wizard Lenin to take this in, to look at Draco Malfoy devoid of any deformities or diaries, walking back towards Lily, "Besides, are we not brothers, you and I? No, monsieur, I bid you welcome. Did you think that I would harm her? Why should I make her pay for the sins which are yours?!"

Suddenly Draco Malfoy came to life, lounged forward with a cry and a spell, " _Expelliarmus!_ "

Lily's wand was walked out of Wizard Lenin's hand, and more, with a flick of Draco's wand Wizard Lenin was thrown onto the ground, head smacking against the stone and leaving his eyes glazed and dazed while Wizard Trotsky moved over him.

Draco moved one last time to produce a diary, slamming it down onto the ground before Wizard Lenin's dazed look even while Lily surged forward towards him, shielding him and slowly lifting his head and neck off the ground.

"Leave Hogwarts now, lead your revolution, my revolution! Steal my name and my glory and take it for yourself without thought to my sacrifice! Or better yet, suffer fifty years in a diary as I have suffered! Nothing can save you now, except, perhaps, Lily."

"Come with me, Lily, buy his soul, his freedom, with our future," he said, eyes whirling to hers, "This is the choice, this is the point of no return!"

And all she could think was that there was blood and that Wizard Lenin, for his freedom from her own mind, had paid for it with a return of his mortality and all the frailties of a human body.

"You know, Lily, that I can do it," Wizard Trotsky said, no hint of hesitation or remorse, while all Lily could do was glitch together his head and stop the bleeding, to try to quickly and safely restore him to his former self while a threat of a diary waited in the air.

Staring at Wizard Trotsky, barking out a laugh, she said, "You and that diary, Trotsky, you deserve each other."

Wizard Lenin, eyes slightly clearer, reached out for her and his lips moved hesitantly, trying to silently form her name. Draco jerked again, wand moving, cutting through Wizard Lenin's flesh as well as some of Lily's. Lily with a twitch of his finger, drove a spike of earth through his heart.

True to his word, Wizard Trotsky continued to become more and more tangible, Draco's death utterly insignificant.

"It will never be that easy, Lily," he hissed, "Even without a basilisk, even without a body, I will never let it be that easy!"

"Lily," Wizard Lenin said, voice barely more than a whisper, and on the end she thought she could read a word, "no" or else "don't", followed by "please".

"You try my patience, Lily, make your choice."

And she wondered, for a moment, if she and Wizard Lenin could still leave. If she couldn't utterly destroy this other overdramatic half of his soul without a second's thought. Or, even if he lived to his word, if she could take Wizard Lenin the notebook and get him out again, into her head or else into the real world once again.

Wizard Trotsky had no idea what he was dealing with, that this was a confrontation, a duel, Lily had already won.

And yet when she looked at him, she saw something more desperate, more pitiful and heartbreakingly lonely than that, "Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known?"

Lily stood, set Wizard Lenin healing carefully down on the stone and moved towards the shaking Wizard Trotsky, "God give me courage to show you, you are not alone."

His skin, beneath hers, was thin and fragile, the tangibility of paper with only the barest hints of warmth. Still, she stood on her toes, leaned forward as far as she could, and pressed her lips lightly to his.

As she stepped back he stared at her, eyes wide, fingers no longer so transparent. He stepped back once, twice, his eyes distant, "Take her. Forget me, forget all of this."

Wizard Lenin stood, hand now grabbing Lily's, pulling her away from Wizard Trotsky who was looking up towards the ceiling of the cavern. Likely listening for the murderous mob after Lily's head.

Another step, then another, towards Draco and his abandoned wand, "Leave me alone, forget all you've seen."

He looked back towards them, pointed towards the back of the chamber of secrets, into Salazar Slytherin's mouth, "Go now, don't let them find you! Don't wait."

Wizard Lenin surged forward even as Lily couldn't help but look behind, wondering at the determination on Wizard Trotsky's features as he looked upward, wondering what he could possibly be planning, "Take her and go, before it's to late! Go now, go now, and leave me!"

Halfway through Wizard Lenin started talking again, "I can't believe you just murdered Draco Malfoy, I can't believe you just…"

Lily stopped in her tracks, looked over her shoulder, "I have to go back."

"Go back," Wizard Lenin balked, "To that are you…"

But it was clicking together inside Lily's head, exactly what it was Wizard Trotsky planned to do, "He'll take the fall for me, let me disappear into the night with you, and make it look like I was possessed like Ginny and Pansy."

"Then let him!" Wizard Lenin said, "Let him damn himself, it's no less than he deserves!"

Lily however, pulled her hand out of his and began stepping back, even at his insistence that she turn around right now. He'd wait for her, she knew, it would only take a few minutes and he'd wait for her…

She found him fully solid, slumped next to Draco Malfoy's body, head buried in his arms on top of his curled knees. At her approach he just stared for a moment too long, eyes blue and burning, and said softly but purely in a way words weren't meant to be spoken, "Lily, I love you."

She just smiled at that, a soft thing that he perhaps did not deserve after everything, but one she felt inclined to give all the same. Wordlessly, carefully, she wove the flower crown he had given to her in his dreams and placed it on his head.

He touched it with reverence, standing for a moment, staring after her as she walked back into the cavern.

And that's how he remained in her mind, even as she took Wizard Lenin's hand once again, as they moved through the tunnels until they were out into the forbidden forest and into the world of Wizard Lenin's revolution.


End file.
